Last week my daughter was married. It was an enchanting affair, a beautiful dream of a wedding. And she looks so happy.

The foundation of our married lives begins riding a wave of unbridled happiness that then lulls to shore, and takes residence in the soft white sand at the edge of the waters. We live in this euphoria for a moment, then it settles loftily about us, like the white gauzy chuppa (wedding canopy) that danced in the delicate breeze above her head, with the sides left open to all the details of life.

It has led me to think about all the beginnings in our lives, and to reflect on all of mine since my marriage all those years ago. There have been many twists and turns, and journeys in directions I could never have foreseen in the bliss of wedding vows.  As my mother would say, “I have had many lives.”

Our life stories are comprised of a succession of beginnings of one kind or another, bobbing and weaving and charting territories yet unknown.  Beginnings come like punctuations, fly off the page in a torrent of hesitations and excitements and settle into complex protagonists, as the pages turn.

Her story is about to unfold. She is embarking on her life as another woman. She will see things I cannot see, vision her life in ways that I can’t know. She will remain stitched into my life so intrinsically that I will feel all her joys and pain, and at the same time she will unbutton her coat from my front hall closet and step away to her life. This is the multi-layered beginning of our journey as mother and daughter after the wedding. It’s a waltz now, you see. There are so many beginnings.