Weddings- they don’t come very often into my life.  I seemed to have traveled six decades and can still count on my fingers the total number of weddings I have ever attended.  So in fit of a cosmic readjustment I attended two weddings last weekend. One groom I have known since he was in diapers and the other groom since he attended Kindergarten with my daughter.

 Happily, the weather gods of New England were kind this wedding weekend, sending cooling breezes, spectacular sunsets, and all the sunshine one could wish for.  In dramatically different settings -  one overlooking Boston Harbor and the other where the marsh and meadow meet on the Slocum’s River, each celebration gave me time to ponder not just bringing together of families and the joy and possibility that weddings are all about, but also the enduring power of the friendships around which we build our “chosen families.”

I hope my children, now in their twenties, will be blessed with a few deep and abiding friendships along the way. When I met the Olebe’s at age 25, I could not have guessed the pleasure in store for me almost 40 years later when I would dance at their son’s wedding, and share a dance with the youngest man of the Olebe clan, Adrian.