Heart overflowing

My feelings about my kids are pretty well known. I am tremendously proud of all three of them. Their accomplishments in all their different fields of endeavor make me very proud.

All of them have given me so many gifts! But not gifts in the traditional ‘unwrap objects’ gifts.

Here is the story of the latest gift.

Mack and Mindy are the parents of my granddaughter Molly Rose.
MRE big eyes in Roch.
Though they have been married twice before… once in a civil ceremony and once in Rochester NY with Mindy’s family in attendance… they had one MORE ceremony recently in Boulder where many of Mack’s family and friends were able to attend.

A wonderful gathering of people came together to celebrate. His grandmother, several aunts, uncles and cousins made (in some cases the extreme) effort to attend. I was pleasantly surprised at the family contingent. Mindy’s folks came from Rochester. A contingent of their LA ‘family of friends’. Kati, Ryan and their close pals as well Alison were there. A remarkable gethering.

Most significant to this story was a group of Mack’s school chums from CU.

Mack was never a jock, or a greek. He was, however, a member of an elite a capella group called ‘In The Buff’. (University of Colorado mascot is a buffalo). This was Mack’s ‘fraternity’. Though he has kept in touch with many members of the group, he had not seen some of these guys since he graduated 7 years ago. More importantly, again to this story, they had not sung together as a group in those 7 years. There were about 10 members of his group there.

The current incarnation of ITB showed up and at one point, got up on the stage and beautifully sang a few songs. But then the ‘boys’ got up to join the fresh faced under grads.

What happened then was, at the risk of being cliched, magical.

They hadn’t sung together in more than 7 years. You could see the joy in their faces as the muscle memory kicked in and they sounded like they had rehearsed all afternoon.

CSNY’s Southern Cross has always been one of my favorite songs. Twenty voices belting out the soaring harmonies was enough to make my hair stand up- even now when I think about it.

Molly was sitting in her mom’s lap- completely spell bound. Oh, she had heard her daddy sing before, but never with 19 other male voices- in harmony- filling her head with sounds she had never experienced.

The crowning moment (and the gift I spoke about before) came as they sang one final song. Mack scooped Molly into his arms and returned to the stage. They then sang their traditional closing song.

The Irish Blessing may be familiar but when sung by twenty powerful voices, one of whom was my son, holding his daughter in his arms, wide eyed at the sounds filling her head, well, it was all too much to bear. The words suddenly took on so much more meaning for me that my heart over flowed. I hope you can feel the emotion.

The words:
May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields and,
Until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

The video is too large to include here. But if you have read this far you might want to click on the the first link, it’ll ask you for a password. That is itb-ib:

https://vimeo.com/76833354
password is = itb-ib

if you have read this far, you might want to check out their version of Southern Cross.

https://vimeo.com/76837951

pw= itb-sc

Any comments on this .. (like you can’t see it for some reason) … pls let me know.

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