Pride at next generation’s audacity of hope

At my daughter’s wedding, I reflected on the life-affirming act of taking a chance on someone in an uncertain world

by Gerard Baker in THE TIMES, 5 May 2023

“You must be very proud.” The kindly, repeatedly proffered observation to the father of a new bride is true, of course. There is nothing like the pride you feel as you watch your brilliant, beautiful daughter confidently take that giant step across the border that separates the banality of carefree youth from the awesome gravity of marriage. But the sentiment doesn’t come close to capturing the intense complexity of emotions that assault the mind on the occasion.

Joy, certainly, at the sight of such pure happiness in your child’s face; a little melancholy, knowing that as the most fruitful phase in her life begins so another in your own comes to an end; gratitude, that the selfless love of her devoted mother produced such a loyal, steadfast woman, mingled with regret, at the thought of the many ways in which you could have been a better father; and all along, a slight foreboding at the sheer magnitude of the undertaking embarked upon.

Nothing quite prepares you for the shock of this emotional battery. No matter how many times you watch Father of the Bride, read the platitudes of Mr Bennet or digest the wisdom of a thousand other daughter-fathers, the sudden reality of this freighted transition in your child’s life is unique.

The nostalgia you feel at the ceremony is almost physical: that hand that nervously clasped yours on the first walk to school, now confidently gripping the hand of the man she chose, not the one she was given at birth; those eyes you watched close at last in peaceful sleep on her mother’s shoulder now fixed with fierce passion on her shared future; the voice that called playfully to you in endless games of hide-and-seek, now firmly announcing a lifelong dedication to the fine young man who alone deserves her.

I have five daughters and Claudia’s wedding last weekend was my first, so I suppose I had better get used to this all-out bombardment of the emotions or the next few years are going to be a raging river for me.

It was a quintessential American wedding in a quintessential American setting: a nuptial mass in a steepled New England church in a picturesque little town, preserved as if in aspic from colonial times, the location almost literally, as it happens, a stone’s throw from where the very first engagement took place between rebellious American colonists and British redcoats in the War of Independence.

This most symbolic venue both entertained and inspired me a little — an Englishman who has made his home in America and seen his children become proud citizens of the new country, while retaining, thank God, all the best qualities of their heritage. It may have been coincidence that my daughter and her new husband happened to live and be married here, but I found myself musing that there might be a deeper subliminal message buried there, a modern declaration of independence by two young Americans from a distant patriarchal authority — in the very week an English king is crowned, no less. It may not have been a shot heard around the world exactly, but it was still a useful reminder that, wherever our intentions for them, our offspring must eventually choose their own path.

If the location didn’t make the message of new-found independence clear, the musical score rammed it home: a very contemporary mix of classical and modern, beginning with a instrumental rendition of Jim Steinman’s pledge by Meat Loaf that I’d Do Anything for Love, followed by the haunting melody of the modern American hymn Canticle of the Turning, a song about the revolutionary power of God’s love — the singing led by another of my magnificent daughters — and which tells of tearing tyrants from their thrones.

But of course you don’t have to believe in God’s love or majesty to appreciate the most important sentiment a wedding expresses, one that seems more and more subdued these days: hope.

Marriage is a risky proposition. It requires a willing suspension of doubts and fears, a bold investment of faith and trust, a commitment to promises about a long-distant future we can’t possibly foresee. The decision to enter into this status has always demanded an improbable level of faith in the future — and your own ability to shape it. But that hope, and the determination to realise it, has never required more commitment than it does today.

It is a shared source of parental fear that my daughters’ generation seems more burdened by existential threats than any in the last century. They have been repeatedly warned that climate change is going to destroy the earth in their lifetimes; they will have to grapple with the most terrifying possibilities of rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence; the stable foundations of liberal democracy my generation took for granted are fractured and crumbling; for the first time since the Cold War, geopolitical tensions summon again the distinct potential of nuclear war.

In these circumstances, the decision to create a new family is nothing less than a bold affirmation of life itself — an expression of hope almost as terrifying as the threats that loom over it. Understanding that — that your child has the sheer audacity to believe in her and her husband’s future — is another cause for pride, and the realisation that they perhaps have a wisdom that a more cynical generation has lost.

As I watched them walk down the aisle, that complex tussle of emotions playing out in my mind, I was reminded of the words of C Day-Lewis, whose poem Walking Away captures the feelings of seeing your child venture hesitantly out into the world for the first time: “Perhaps it is roughly/ Saying what God alone could perfectly show/ How selfhood begins with a walking away/ And love is proved in the letting go.”