By PETE GIORDANO
Special to Brentwood Home Page
I blinked and 25 years have gone by. I sat thinking this at the wedding of Anne Porter and Andrew Bumbalough on Saturday. The ceremony and the outdoor venue were beautiful, and I promise I paid attention, but a series of thoughts were running through my mind during it.

When I first saw Andrew standing at the front, I started thinking about the several years I was one of his rec league soccer coaches during his elementary school days. I coached the team with a good friend, Bill Vickery, who fortunately knew something about soccer because I sure didn't. About halfway through the first season, Bill created a special position for Andrew, which Bill called "Attack-Defender." The position was perfect for Andrew, because wherever you put him on the field, he wouldn't stop running and wouldn't hold his position. At Attack-Defender, Andrew ran the whole game from one end of the field to the other, sometimes attacking and sometimes defending.

As I sat watching Andrew waiting for Anne to come down the aisle, I was thinking about how he would be so red-faced and exhausted at the end of each soccer match. I had blinked, and he was now a world-class runner training for the upcoming Olympic trials.

Then I got lost in reverie again and started thinking about my own two boys, now almost 25 and 21, and wondered when exactly they turned into young men? Wasn't I just recently in our struggling vegetable garden with Nicholas having a conversation about his toe knuckles (I had never considered that toes had knuckles)? Hadn't I just buckled Michael into his car seat, and then slid into the driver's seat with a Coke in my hand? And hadn't he very earnestly said to me, "Dad (dramatic pause), you're not supposed to drink and drive!"

Then, like the unfolding of a Hallmark commercial, I began to think about how my experience of weddings had changed so dramatically in the blink of an eye. I remember sitting as a young man at weddings thinking, "I cannot believe that guy is getting married. Never thought it would happen. He's the first; who's next?" Then after Jan and I were married, I would sit at weddings and compare them to ours. At the reception I might think, "I love this band. I wish we had known about this band for our reception."

Now we are in the phase of watching this generation of kids getting married. I now pay attention to the parents of the bride and groom. What does it feel like to "give away" your daughter or watch your son pledge his devotion for the rest of his life to this young woman? I don't know what that must feel like. I suppose you have to do it to understand it. But I imagine it must be a complex swirl of joy, sadness, anticipation, hope, and so on.

The next moment, I was back from my brief daydream and listening to James Wells' heavenly voice as he sang. I glanced around at the folks of my 50-something generation and wondered how many others felt that they had blinked and 25 years had just slipped by.

Brentwood resident Dr. Pete Giordano is chair of the psychology department at Belmont University.