Made it through another day - yay, go me.

But I now discover that I am to make a speech at the wedding. Bloody bloody hell. I am doing the father of the bride stuff, YD's two father's having been absent either physically or emotionally for most of her life and her feeling indignant at the idea of them taking centre stage and me not having a role. So I'm walking her in and at some point in the service I'm reading this:

I carry your heart - by e e cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Which made me cry [really? how unusual] when I first read it, but presumably won't by the time the day comes. It's been a long time since I stood in front of a crowd of people and read poetry aloud - 2007, I reckon it was - so I'll have to be practising.

And then, the first of the speeches. So I looked it up, to see what's the norm. Just to check it out, not to feel beholden to it, but for a shape to either follow or not, rather than a blank sheet of infinite possibilities. It seems to go: 1 welcome and thanks, 2 a bit about her 3 a bit about him 4 more thanks, words of wisdom. Words of wisdom from me on the subject of marriage - hollow laughter.

I'm calming down about it now, but for the first few hours after getting news of this speech-making my mind was filled with endless awful scenes from our life together. Times when I feared for her life, from falling into a frozen pond, aged two, and disappearing under the ice, running off, at about the same age, in front of a car which hit her and knocked her up into the air and round the corner, out of sight. She was fine, just a bit dazed, but I dreamed my run to the corner, in slow motion, not knowing what I would find, for months. Running away aged eight, before any of us woke up so we had no idea how long she'd been gone, just an empty bed, and a policewoman finding one of her T shirts (with identifiable paint marks) in the harbour - she was fine again, and found soon after, but fucking hell. There's been more, too many more. We've had some vicious fights as well, man, she has been difficult and still is in many ways.

So that's all the negativity out of my system and already good memories are starting to appear, but now it's time for bed.

I am grateful for: this blog to empty shit into; getting a lovely invite to go round old friend M's for coffee, which I did and it was grand; having a lovely daughter to moan about, if not two and a son; having made a commitment to do fuck all apart from meet pre-existing commitments until after Glasto; Sis lending me another £100 to tide me over

Sleep tight xxx