Reception

That she might marry seemed so unlikely that the possibility never even arose. Her physical condition--she's a quad, had been since birth--put marriage somehow out of the question in my mind, but not in hers. Her Facebook page, I couldn't help but notice, began to suggest she'd found an admirer of some sort, and love, holding on to another's deep and committed affection, is always a blessing, no matter what synods say. 

She'd been a student of mine, always accompanied by her mother, her sidekick in several classes--both lit and writing, a fine student. I'd recommended her for graduate school in fact, and I knew she'd gone and graduated from a writing program not so far away. 

But that was years ago, so when a note appeared in my in-box, it came as a surprise--I hadn't seen her or heard from her for years. She was getting married, she explained, and she'd really like it if I came to the wedding and read something at her reception.

I'll admit it--I was stunned, even though her Facebook page had hinted there'd been a significant other. 

The request wasn't exactly extraordinary. I'd read things at wedding receptions before, and I felt greatly honored by her asking. She had to be nudging close to 40 years old. No was not an answer.

"Well, tell me about this guy," I said in a note, a question I would have asked anyone getting hitched at her age. She told me she met him on-line, a dating service for people with special needs. Their relationship was no fly-by-night-er either. He'd come from far out-of-state and lived near her for some time, for years, in fact; and through that time they'd determined they wanted to seal the thing and live their lives together. 

I was skeptical--I'll admit it; but two moments in the first few of that wedding made my heart sing. First, a warm and wonderful Cheshire-cat smile spread broadly over the groom's face when his bride, in her wheelchair, came down the aisle, pushed along by her big brother (her father had died years ago). That lovely wide grin rose up straight from blessed, healthy devotion.

He was smiling at his bride, the requisite bouquet in her lap, while the theme music from Chariots of Fire was piped into the sanctuary. I couldn't help but giggle. She'd deliberately chosen the immediately recognizable percussive melody from a famous movie about faith, yes--and Olympics-level running. Wasn't a joke really, more like a metaphor--and it was beautiful because whatever skepticism I had carried into that sanctuary was put to rest before the vows were even spoken. She was in charge, he was in love, and all of this was legit.

When I'd asked her what she kinds of things she'd like me to read at the reception, she'd been almost careless--"well, whatever you'd like," an answer that didn't assuage my apprehension one bit. So I kept questioning, but she kept giving me a blank check. (All of this is by email; she really doesn't speak.) Finally, she said she'd send me something she wrote, if that would help at all. It did, so I packed her thoughtful essay with three five-minute love stories drawn from the 19th century Great Plains.

When the emcee--an uncle, I think, some relation anyway--lobbed jokes at her and about her, jokes that got belly laughs all around, I couldn't help but realize the crowd knew her far, far better than I did. Many knew her from her childhood. Some had watched her grow. They'd known--and laughed about--her Chariots-of-Fire sense of humor, a character I didn't know or hadn't witnessed. They were, in a broad sense, family. 

It was painfully clear to me that what I'd set out to read for her that night was going to sink badly, just not the thing at that moment. My love stories weren't going to ring any bells with that bunch. When I got the mike, I read one, then shifted gears quickly and took up the essay she'd sent me, her very own words.

And thus began what was for me the most treasured "reading" of my literary life. Her essay described her anguish at the realization she came to the morning she'd discovered she had no voice at all, nothing there to move the cursor over the screen, nothing but silence. The only voice was despair.

Some time later, she'd discovered a computer that would read her eyes, a technology that would allow her to continue, literally, to have a voice, to teach writing, to write stories. What she'd sent me was a beautiful composition about her anguish and her joy at holding once again what most of us could never imagine losing. It is a very fine essay about her, in her own words. 

But while I was reading it to a room full of friends and family, I couldn't help but realize that what family and friends were hearing at that moment was the voice of a woman they'd never actually heard before, a voice emerging from an essay she'd written herself in words that documented her anguish, her pain, and her immense thanks for what she'd recovered. I couldn't help thinking, at least metaphorically, what they heard was an essay about faith and Olympics-level running.

Their rapt attention had little to do with me, some ex-prof from somewhere in her educational past. Their devoted silence their hearing, for the first time, a voice that chose the words she'd learned to love and wield in ways that brought what she was feeling into honest testimony. Those who loved her were hearing a voice they'd never heard before.

When I came home, I told my wife that I'd never had so blest a reading, and all the while I'd been used. They weren't my words. They were nothing I'd written. All I did was deliver the goods. My blessing was that I allowed her to speak to people she loved, people who loved her.

I can't begin to explain what a blessing it was to be so thus used.