Last night, I finished writing a wedding speech and toast that I will deliver next weekend.
The writing process began over a year ago with brainstorming and idea generation, captured mostly on my phone when ideas popped into my head. There have been writing bursts across the months as I contemplated different ways to offer advice to my oldest daughter Ella Schuellerman and her fiancé Alan Adams, before celebrating their union with first dances and all the other revelry.
It was face-in-my-phone writing at different points during the high-energy Gypsy Kings concert a couple weeks back in the acoustically beautiful Goodyear Theater in Akron. My wife Pam and I were there as a guests of masterful home chef and retired transportation and logistics executive John Palma and his wife Maria. The warm-up act, a folk singer, triggered something in me with his performance. I wanted to hug the lighting designer for setting the stage. Simply outstanding craftsmanship.
At one ridiculous point last month, I spotted an opportunity for some borrowed-interest lessons from the legendary 1989 Patrick Swayze film Road House, which wasn’t as bad as I remember and worth re-watching for a shot of nostalgia. If you go there, prepare yourself for Swayze's lakeside yoga scene and give in to the fantasy of all the struggles presented through the dialogue and story.
In time, I returned to a theme that occurred to me when co-writing poems on the fly with my son Henry Schuellerman and his college roommate Liam Nigro on their front porch earlier this summer. Liam knew Alan before any of us. They played lacrosse together when Liam attended John Carroll University, prior to transferring to The Ohio State University.
Contemplating the vastness of our world and what must happen for people to meet one another fascinates me. It makes my brain hurt sometimes. But therein lies a theme—or one of them—for the big speech.
I won’t scoop myself, so for now just a photographic glimpse…
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