EVERY STEP WON'T GO RIGHT










“And, dad, I am not your 26-year-old ‘young son’, I will be completing 28 coming September… So, I am almost a 30-year-old ‘Man’! My son pointed to a mistake I had done in one of my recent blogs.


“Oh, No, my son!” … I started counting from 1991 – the year I married to my wife… and from 1992, the year our son was born…


That made him, in ‘Sound of Music’s’ famous words - ‘I am 27… Going on (going to be) 28’!


Often, our own spouses remind us as to how many years we have coasted together and our own children remind us – like our son did yesterday – how old they have really become!


But, let me tell you this: I am neither ashamed of this ‘slip’ from my end… nor do I consider myself an incompetent and uncaring husband or father…


Nobody had trained me to be a husband or a father… I had to learn it along the uncharted course… just like every one else had to, has to and will have to.


Every time the planning takes place, around me, for a grand wedding… dream wedding… destination wedding… and all that, every time, the young would-be couple – and all the best men and bride’s maids, page boys and page girls - spend hours and hours rehearsing the ‘steps’… I smile in my heart and wonder: ‘Did every step go right for me and my wife over these, yes, close to three decades of marriage?”







I feel like telling the young couples: “It’s okay, if you skip a step… It’s okay if you fumble, goof-up.”


When the euphoria and hysteria end, the real living and loving start!


And, those choreographed steps won’t be of any help… The music will have to be new; the dance will have to be new; the vows will have to be new… fresh!












In our Catholic wedding receptions, the Master of Ceremony leads the bridal couple and the guests as he has meticulously planned… the entry to exit. In all communities and cultures, all over the world, the weddings have become bigger, grander and even gaudier… And, somewhere inside us, we all have failed to recognize the ‘slip’ that’s happening right from the word ‘Go’… That, a wedding is just an event, a day… Marriage is a lifetime. That, weddings can be planned to perfection… Marriages can’t be. That, the marriage vows have to be renewed and relived over and over and over again. That, through the right steps and the wrong steps, the dance has to go on… Love has to go on!


And, today, they say is ‘Valentine’s Day’!


GERALD D’CUNHA

Pic.:weneedfun.com

Videos.: 1. Beirut 2. T-Series 3. The Wedding Story

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