HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!
On this day—another Saturday—in 2004, Heather and Paul were married in Benton Chapel at Vanderbilt.
Today is chilly and rainy, but that one was sunny and breezy and the campus trees were at the peak of fall color. So many family and friends gathered to celebrate with them—from many different states. I was especially delighted that so many good friends from South Carolina could come.
Somehow this photo became one of my favorites. I liked the image of Heather and Paul stepping out through the heavy chapel doors into the bright daylight awaiting them—just as they were beginning their new life together. It was so fitting that their wedding was on the Vanderbilt campus—where both had done their undergraduate work (without meeting even once!), where Paul’s dad had a long and distinguished career in the medical school, and where Heather was working at the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy. And now she’s a lecturer on the Peabody campus there.
As our children walk through those doorways into their adult lives, “we will be in line behind” them!
Our Children Coming of Age
In the great circle, dancing in
and out of time, you move now
toward your partners, answering
the music suddenly audible to you
that only carried you before
and will carry you again.
When you meet the destined ones
now dancing toward you,
we will be in line behind you,
out of your awareness for the time,
we whom you know, others we remember
whom you do not remember, others
forgotten by us all.
When you meet, and hold love
In your arms, regardless of all,
the unknown will dance away from you
toward the horizon of light.
Our names will flutter
on these hills like little fires.
Seeing a story 