The Day Dad Gave Me Away

His hand never let go of mine. Not once. His grip was strong, stronger than I’d felt it since before January, and he held on as if I was the one who might tip over.

I could hear people crying. That surprised me. Men, too. Off to the left I heard Mr. Halverson, who farmed the section next to Dad’s for forty years, say very low to his wife, “Look at Gene. Would you look at Gene.”

Dad heard it too. I felt his hand tighten on mine. He sat up a little straighter in the chair, lifted his chin, and nodded to Mr. Halverson as we passed, like a man at a parade.

Halfway down I looked at the front pew. Connie was the only one in the church still sitting, in her sage dress, as if her legs had given out when the doors opened.

Her face was absolutely white. She was watching Dad, not me. I don’t think she blinked.

Jake was waiting at the front with his brother. He was trying not to cry and losing. When he saw Dad’s face, he lost completely and had to wipe his eyes with the heel of his hand.

We reached the front. I set the brakes on the wheelchair, one side and then the other, and stood beside it. Dad’s hand was still in mine. It was shaking now, just a little.

The pastor waited for the music to end and for everyone to sit. The pews creaked. Somebody’s baby fussed and was hushed. The yellow light lay across the floor.

Then the pastor looked down at my father, kindly, and asked it the way he had asked it at every wedding in that church for twenty years.

“Who gives this woman to be married to this man?”

The church went completely still.

I’d talked with the pastor beforehand. If Dad couldn’t get the words out, he’d nod, and I’d squeeze his hand, and the pastor would say, “Her father gives her,” and move on. Nobody would make anything of it. That was the plan.

Dad’s mouth worked. I felt his whole body gather itself in the chair. In the front pew, Connie leaned forward, her hand at her throat.

He took a breath so deep I felt it travel up my arm.

“Her mother,” my father said, loud and clear, so the back pew heard it, “and I do.”

For a moment there was no sound at all.

Then he said it again, quieter, just to me. “Her mother and I.”

I don’t remember much of the next few minutes. I know I bent and kissed him.

I know I put his hand into Jake’s hand, and Jake held it a long moment before letting go. I know there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

What I remember is turning, and seeing Connie in the front pew. She was crying with both hands over her face. Not the polite, dabbing kind of crying people do at weddings. Her shoulders were shaking.

Five words. Jenna had worked on them with him every Tuesday since May. Sixty miles each way, in the gray van. Four months of practice for one sentence, and Connie had driven him to every single session.

She’d never known what the sentence was. Later Jenna told me Dad made her promise not to say. He’d wanted it to be a surprise for everybody.