Wedding Bouquet, the week after

My daughter is now married. Like my own marriage and childbirth, my main emotional reaction to this event was, "How am I supposed to feel?" There was joy and pleasure but also simple shock at the momentousness of the moment, so unnerving as to be unreal. These are the sort of pivots in the stream of life which you have to keep holding up in front of you and wondering over. 

I remember my own wedding bouquet, made by a florist, so huge I termed it a "bush" and ripped it down to half its size. We forgot about it at the reception. On my honeymoon, I threw it into Lake Michigan and watched the pink petal roses and white freesia float off dreamily in the vast silver and blue and gray magnificence of the Lake.

My own daughter wanted a bouquet from my flower garden instead of the florist, and decreed that I only was entrusted to make it. Her groom's mother had bought her lilies, since my daughter loves them and there were none in my garden, but I paired these with white Rose of Sharon, herbs like thyme, and even a few flowering weeds, all white or pale pink. In the center was the only white rose blooming in the garden the day of the wedding. 

Just as I did, my daughter forgot about her bouquet at the reception. When she came back from the honeymoon, she found it and said, "I don't know what to do with this now." Lake Michigan being too far away, she decided to send it to a cousin bridesmaid as a souvenir.  But I snapped this photo before it left, to help me remember and to ponder in my heart. I love the lilies with their purple hearts, and I love the trailing weeds and the delicate oregano blossoms, and the iridescent ribbon. And I love my daughter and her husband, and marriage and family and life itself. So huge. So difficult to see. Sometimes we can only see them and feel them through the snippets. Like this one.