I think I need a new toaster. All good things come to an end, or more specifically all appliances big and small are only temporary possessions for us all. And I have already written that I get a little nostalgic when it happens. Sometimes, even little misty.

I’ve been married for 45 years, so the breakdown for toaster life in my household seems to be somewhere between 20 and 20+ years. A pretty good investment I would say.

My first toaster was a wedding gift. I grew up in a small town, returned there from college to have a small town wedding. I registered at the wonderful and beautiful Marshall Fields, in the Big City on State Street in Chicago, and at my local hardware store. I told you—I was from a small town.

The toaster came from the hardware store. I’ve since forgotten who the lovely gift giver was, but the toaster as swell as it was, was just a two slicer. You could only toast two slices of toast at a time. And at the ripe age of 22. I believed that any toaster worth having, must have four slice capability. So before my husband and I set off for his graduate school and my new big life in another midwest state, we stopped at the hardware store and swapped out our two slice toaster for a fabulous four slice toaster. It lasted in our household at least 20 years. At which time I bought another slightly more upscale, from a gourmet kitchen shop, four slice toaster. And as I look at it this morning, I think it’s time has come and gone.

So I’m not complaining about the longevity of toasters. Although I will add a footnote that for as long as my mother had a toaster, she had the same one.
But this is a blog about crying and I am definitely not crying about a toaster.

This past summer, our daughter was married. (By some quirk of genetics, she prefers a toaster oven. I don’t know how this aberration happened.)
And since we’re talking about crying, it’s important to know that, I have always been a big crier at weddings. I can almost always feel tears well up in my eyes at specific points of weddings. When the bride walks down the aisle, especially if I’m good friends with the bride side of the family. I better have tissues handy. But I also got a little misty eyed when our own godson danced with his mother at his wedding. A beautiful solo at a church wedding can also call tears to my eyes. But then again, a favorite hymn at a Sunday service can also bring on the tears. So in my family I am famously a crier.

As we were prepping for the wedding, no one I knew asked me if I would cry at the wedding. They probably just assumed I would at some point. There were many comments made about the fact that my husband, the bride’s father, would be sure to cry. The question was would he cry when he took advantage of the new tradition, of the First Look look for dad? Or would we see tears fall from his Irish eyes as he brought his daughter down the aisle?
Well, since we’re talking about crying. I’ll add this, I love it when other people cry at weddings. I love it when a maid of honor becomes verklempt as her best friend takes her marriage vows. I love it when the bride gets misty, and has trouble saying her vows, and the maid of honor, hands her a tissue or handkerchief. I think it’s one of the things that make weddings so special. It’s just great all that crying. All that emotion. All that love revealed for everybody to see. So yes, crying at weddings I’m totally for it.
So I guess you’re wondering when I did my crying at the wedding?
Well, nothing is sure in life, except that nothing is sure in life.

This summer, when my husband entered the special room to see his one and only daughter in her beautiful bridal finery, he shed not a tear. A fact I still can’t get over. And we have the photographic proof to for this as well. There is a picture of my daughter, looking at her dad with her hand on her hip. In my mind I think she’s saying “well, what’s up Dad?” because she didn’t see any tears.
As the wedding party lined up in the vestibule behind, closed doors, waiting for our entrance, I had no idea whether or not I would cry.
The string quartet was in the choir loft of the beautiful old downtown church. And when they began playing “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” the officiants walked down the aisle. And after a dramatic pause, the mother of the bride, (that would be me!) walked down the aisle.
The wedding was beautiful, as I believe all weddings are. And my handkerchief stayed clean and dry in my special mother of the bride purse.

It’s been more than six months since the big shindig. And recently I was in my kitchen doing something quite kitchen-y I’m sure. I was listening while I worked, to the playlist I had created of the music that my daughter and I selected for the string quartet to play for the wedding ceremony. It was a combination repertoire of a millennial’s , favorite tunes (Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Coldplay) interspersed with classics suggested by the mother of the bride. Bach, Beethoven and a touch of the Beatles filled the air with music in the one hundred year old church on that lovely wedding day.
And as I made soup or spaghetti or wiped down the counters in my sunny kitchen, the bridal processional tune my daughter had selected played on the kitchen Alexa; Only Fools Rush In.

And I cried.