My toast is a two-parter:
First, I so wish Tom were here today; I know he would have loved Hannah's smarts and her sparkle. And he'd be crazy proud of you, David. So first, a toast to Tom.
But I want to tell a Tom story from back in the early days of our marriage, when we were still starry eyed newlyweds whose default response to any gift for any occasion hadn't yet devolved to "Whydja get me that?" or the dreaded "Look what I just bought..." spoken a day before someone's birthday.
Giftwise, possibly the most offbase I ever was (worse than the dribble hoses, Tom would agree, but I still think the dribble hoses were a good idea) was the time I made him a little wallet card with his favorite quote on it. I'd paid like $3 a sheet for the fancy paper at Michael's, and I worked on the calligraphy for literal weeks. I even put little blue butterflies in one corner. He opened the small gift box, expecting maybe a tietack?. But he looked at the card, and he looked at me, and from somewhere he found some words -- "Thank you, Linda; this is very nice. But I am never going to carry this in my wallet." And that little card went into in his top dresser drawer, but right there in a spot where I know he saw it every day, and that thought still makes me smile.
Helen Keller had written an essay I think around 1900, late in her studies or shortly after earning her degree from Radcliffe, called Optimism. Marriage requires a fair bit of optimism, and over a lifetime you'll have maybe six big decisions like Should we buy this house or Do you wanna move for my new job ... followed by months and years of cleaning underneath the toilet seat and bellyaching that someone put the good knife in the dishwasher again. Or so I've heard.
So while Helen Keller wasn't talking about MY marriage when she wrote it, I'm talking about YOURS when I tell you that she shared that "I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble ... The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."
To David & Hannah. I love you both. Welcome to married life.
