Father of the Bride.

My dad's beautiful toast, as requested. My dad also blogs here. He writes books on TV shows and has made a name for himself (seriously, I can't count how many times people--random people--have asked if I was his daughter) as a television scholar and a brilliant teacher. And this speech will stick with me forever. And I look up to him more than he will ever know.

In his final great poem, “Asphodel That Greeny Flower,” William Carlos Williams sits with his wife Flossie by the Atlantic Ocean and contemplates their marriage, a relationship—as all are—of infinite complexity. And their wedding day is vivid in their memories and imaginations. “As I think of it now,/after a lifetime” Williams writes, “it is as if/a sweet-scented flower/were poised/and for me did open.”

We have all just witnessed—been blessed enough to witness—the flower of Jason and Sarah’s marriage open. Of course this wonderful flowering had a prelude that many of us have been privileged to watch as well.

A young man, kind, gentle, and generous, who makes me retroactively embarrassed at my own early attempts at fatherhood and who has shown himself capable of great love for a young woman Joyce and I hold most dear, a nurturer and protector a father could only dream of.

A young woman, brilliant from day one, the finest young writer I know with the most precious soul it is possible to imagine. One day, not too far away, it will be my honor to be known as her father. To be that man more than fulfills my own life’s ambitions.

May Jason and Sarah’s love and life bloom. May their marriage be a perfect flowering of two special human beings.