I am in a Starbucks outside Fredricksburg, Virginia. My wife is off with my daughter and her best friend (and Maid of Honor) getting a pedicure and all that pre-wedding stuff. Yes, my daughter is getting married this weekend.

People have been busily asking me how I am doing. I am not sure what they are expecting. Blubbering? Yes, it is am emotional time, but I am not feeling blubbery. Sad? What for? It’s a good time. She has chosed a good man and he has chosen her. They have been together long enough to know it is a truly good match. Sad because she is “leaving me”? Hardly. I raised her, prepared her. She’s lived on her own for years now, making her own choices.

That, the ability to make her own choices has always been important to her. I can remember when she left elementary school for middle school. I asked her after a week or so what she thought. For a lot of kids it is an intimidating time.

Not Drewry. Confidently she answered “I love it! I get to choose my own classes. My own directions, my own schedule.” That was at 11. Truth is, she was that way at five, and that side of her has been true all her life. Part of the reason she left Va to live with me at 15 was that with me she could make her own choices. And she has aways made far more good ones than not. I just prepared guidance and gave her a safe place to grow and make those choices.

Sad, because another man is in her life? Hell no. If if I did not know the man she is marrying, I would trust her choices. But I do know him. He’s a good man. They fit together well. What we want, what we prepare them for, isn’t it? To find their own way, grow their own relationships and their own life.

The fact that I am both walking her down the aisle and doing the ceremony? Hardly. That’s the easy part. The hard part is raising them, and mostly, I think I did I did pretty well.

In fact, that is worth celebrating, that to this point in her life, we love each other. I seem to have prepared her well and she is well ready and able to make the important choices in her life. It’s a celebration not just of the day, but the journey we have made together.

My parents did a really good job of letting me and my sisters grow up. They never hovered. They made sure we knew we were loved and that they were there when we needed them. It was just the right mix, and with Drewry being so much like me, I conciously have emulated that same way of parenting a growing up, and later a grown up daughter. And this weekend, as she moves to this new phase of her life, I could not be happier. I wish my parents, particularly my mother could be here.

One more thing to be thankful for – my wife has been a good stepmother. My kids love her and she loves them. She and Drewry have such a connection and that does not alway happen. That is another part of the celebration.

Many of you are regular readers, and if you are, you have heard me talk often of how slowly I process emotions. That often in the moment I do not feel as much as most people. But I am fully in the moment now, about to sit back and be glad, for her. For him. For the confidence I have in both of them as people and as a couple. I can be glad in a job well done, often in the hardest of circumstances to be where she and I are today.

So, a joyful time. And a joy in all that has happend and come together to make it a happy time. It was not inevitable. But here we are, and there is joy to be enjoyed. Thank you for letting me share that joy with you, my readers, and often too, my friends.

Be well. Make good choices,

Tom