for mrs. pumpkin

in three days, she goes, to her brand new world of bright clothes and happy faces. a world of newness much like the one she stepped into twenty-five years ago. i tell her this and she smiles, nervously. new worlds have their own challenges, she tells me, and i nod. they also bring with them the promise of new life, i reply, and the ability to tear away old fabric to reveal new love, new names to memorise, new blood to learn to care for. i am as nervous as she is, but i dare not say a word. if she cries at the wedding, i know i will walk to a corner and cry with her. all i can do, sitting quietly in my roomful of books, is think of her and know, without a shadow of doubt, that i will, as always, be one phone call away. and that’s a good thing for both of us. travel well, baby pumpkin.

"...and may her bridegroom bring her to a house
where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
for arrogance and hatred are the wares
peddled in the thoroughfares.
how but in custom and in ceremony
are innocence and beauty born?
ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
and custom for the spreading laurel tree."

-- william butler yeats, ‘a prayer for my daughter’