The Song about Kitty's Wedding

Dad and Bride
Originally uploaded by thegreatplotnik.

The father walks his daughter up the gravel path by the sea. In a few minutes she is to be married, but for these 200 steps she is still his, if she ever was, if any daughter through time has ever really belonged to any father.

The Great Plotnik aims his camera at the empty spot above the ocean, between two small mounds of sea grass, and as the dad and daughter walk into the frame, the shutter snaps. Five seconds later the space is blank again, save for the ocean, and the grass, and the sky and the clouds.

If The Great Plotnik were to write a song about Kitty's Wedding, he would write about this moment, when John's arm was Kitty's link to the future. She couldn't move on without him, and he felt good to have his part to play.

In the end, it's always about moments like these. What comes before, what comes after, the convoluted reasons humans behave as we do, become distilled into frames by the sea. Later on, we look into these frames and try to remember what we were thinking about, what the weather was like, was the cake chocolate or olallie berry?

But all we'll see is a very beautiful bride and her smiling dad, and the ocean beyond. It's still 5:15PM, Saturday, September 17. It's breezy. The air smells of salt and sage.