In the lead-up to the wed­ding, time seemed to fly by. With Mag­gie and the Gard­ners man­ag­ing the bulk of the arrange­ments, I still found numer­ous tasks on my own to-do list. I rum­maged through my attic and found my old tuxe­do, the last time I had worn it being my wed­ding day twen­ty-eight years pri­or. Although it no longer fit, nos­tal­gia filled me as I sift­ed through its pock­ets, dis­cov­er­ing a cock­tail nap­kin stained with Colleen’s lip­stick, which I decid­ed to keep for good luck.

For the wed­ding, I opt­ed to rent a light-gray sum­mer tuxe­do from Men’s Wear­house, com­plete with a match­ing vest and bow tie. The sales­man, a young man with pink hair and pierc­ings, was eager to make a sale and suc­cess­ful­ly con­vinced me to pur­chase a nine-piece acces­so­ry pack­age includ­ing shoes and cuff links. My daugh­ter’s wed­ding left me with a feel­ing of good­will towards every­one around me.

My pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty for the week­end was prepar­ing a toast for the recep­tion. The bridal web­sites sug­gest­ed that the ide­al length was nine­ty sec­onds, encour­ag­ing me to speak from the heart. How­ev­er, as I attempt­ed to write, I found myself with eigh­teen pages of notes, strug­gling to con­dense my thoughts into the allot­ted time. Each writ­ing ses­sion seemed to exac­er­bate the issue by increas­ing the length of my notes.

I also tried to form a bond with my future son-in-law, Aidan, by propos­ing we attend a Red Sox game. How­ev­er, Mag­gie informed me that Aidan wasn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in sports. I then sug­gest­ed a vis­it to the Boston Muse­um of Fine Arts, where he could show me his favorite exhibits, but despite our shared inter­ests, we could nev­er pin down a date. After sev­er­al attempts met with excus­es from Aidan, I real­ized he might not be keen to spend time togeth­er, some­thing I chose not to take per­son­al­ly, acknowl­edg­ing he already had a father fig­ure.

Mag­gie, too, seemed pre­oc­cu­pied, and I found that dis­heart­en­ing. Although we had re-estab­lished com­mu­ni­ca­tion, her busy sched­ule with wed­ding plan­ning and her job left lit­tle room for our con­ver­sa­tions, which often end­ed quick­ly. She reas­sured me, promis­ing more fam­i­ly time dur­ing our stay at Osprey Cove before the wed­ding, where we could even relive our past camp­ing adven­tures, like canoe­ing together—an idea that delight­ed me. As July pro­gressed, I antic­i­pat­ed our reunion while vow­ing to give Mag­gie the space she need­ed until the big day.