The Wedding Toast in Two Languages

Radu's daughter asked him to give a wedding toast in both languages spoken by the guests. He wrote the first version in Romanian, full of familiar expressions about home and belonging. When he translated it into English, some sentences sounded possessive. The phrase about giving his daughter away particularly bothered him, although he had used it casually for years.

He asked her to read the draft. She crossed out several jokes and wrote beside one paragraph: I am not leaving the family. Radu felt corrected in more ways than one. He had wanted to express generosity, but the speech made him sound like the owner of something valuable that another man was finally being permitted to take home.

For the next draft, he described teaching her to repair a puncture. She had insisted on doing the second wheel alone, then called him because she could not find the pump. The memory allowed room for competence and connection without requiring either of them to disappear. His daughter approved the story, though she corrected which bicycle they had been repairing.

At the reception, Radu lost his place while changing languages. His daughter quietly supplied the next sentence from her chair. The guests laughed, and he continued without apologising. Afterwards, people congratulated him on a touching speech. He remembered instead the ordinary assistance from the woman at the table, who could manage her own life and still help her father finish a sentence.