retrospect

Today is your wedding

Mango and cherry 

Ripe with 

the taste of jubilee.

I'm happy, we're happy, 

of course you're happy too…

When I was twelve years old my father brought home cherries from a trip to the high country. It must have been summer because that's the cherry season. I never knew what a mango was.

When you were twelve years old I saw you peeking round a corner with another girl who looked the same. Peas in a pod. You’re not like either of them now though your hair is still long.

A pair of brown eyes peering at me… 

I remember it so clearly but we 

didn't actually meet for another two years 

and 

didn't know each other for twenty.

When I first met your mother you were at high school. Did you think about getting married then? Or even about falling in love? Maybe with Brad Pitt or Keanu Reeves …

When I was young and foolish I never thought about marriage. I didn't know what love was. I didn't know what a mango was.

Mangoes, the sweetest fruit …  but even without chocolate, ripe cherries taste the best. Red and soft. Listen to the taste, recall the joy of that first time. Our twelve year old selves looking at the sky and believing it went on forever. Like life itself.

When I was twelve riding my bike through the leafy eastern suburbs, pretending I was a cowboy on a palomino pony, I saw a painted sign on a railway viaduct that strangely said 

“The World Is A Cabbage." 

A few weeks later someone painted over it in white letters six feet high 

“Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries." 

Rattling red trains carried workers over red brick arches, unaware of the struggle between cabbage and cherries below. 

School children laughed, 

pondered, 

wondered 

and 

rode uphill 

Into headwinds.

If you really want perspective, you to have to stand back. A long way back Tame Punk said … because that is how the light gets in, reflecting and refracting, bending to slip through the cracks, casting shadow and darkness even as it shines upon the world. 

Today is your wedding. The breeze is gentle, clouds break and the earth spins from west to east. None of us lasts forever but sometimes the moment does. He sang that everything can be replaced and every distance is not near but we know that some distances can break your heart. Keep the precious close.

Mangoes are best when ripe and juicy. As for cherries, choose them by their colour but remember the pip. It's easy to bite your own tongue as you savour the flavour.  We ignore the strong winds blowing lonely, the seven seas running high, until it’s all in our face. We dance in photographs, some taken years ago by people we don’t even know and barely even met. One day we’ll sit alone and try to remember.

Mango cherry, 

ripe or sour, 

lemon lime sublime. 

All the fruits of life and love longing for a future 

sliced and diced from stolen lyrics.

Other people's words. Floating awhile in the air we breathe, to be mangled by our memories when spoken aloud.

A world of chaos where

fearful things can be hidden, 

forgotten. 

But that which should be 

forbidden 

is loneliness

Whenever changes come or go we cross a bridge or maybe two or three or four. It’s good to have a joke and laugh a laugh. Chasing down the street and running through the park. Skipping and a-jumping hey, brown eyed girls.

After all we are just kids, no different really to the four rapscallions that came from your own bodies. Born ten thousand miles apart but still they play together, mostly happy, like a bowl of cherries.

Written as a speech for the wedding of our daughter, 27 January 2024