I'm Going to the Wedding

Charles, honey
I am going to lay it out for you
Plain and simple

I am going to the wedding

Do I approve of the wedding?

No

Am I happy about the wedding?

No

Am I entirely certain that when they ask
If anybody objects
I am not going to shout out
Like Lord Jesus has just goosed my behind?

No

But I am going to the wedding

Because if there is a choice
Between being proud
And seeing our daughter
Get married
To that idjit
I choose the latter

Because you see Charles
I gave up my pride a long time ago
As Miss Luce said in The Women

'Pride is something that a woman in love cannot afford.'

Then again, maybe Elizabeth Taylor said that

Either way, I love our daughter
And for her, I gave up my pride
A long time ago
But perhaps you did not

Perhaps while I was cleaning baby throw-up out of my hair
And driving around in my pajamas to pick her up from school
And dressing up like Chunky the Chicken for her seventh birthday party
You were hanging onto your pride

Well, guess what, honey?

It's time to say good-bye to that little pride of yours

Whether or not you go to that wedding
You will not be the same man when I come back

You will not be sitting on this porch
With your arms crossed
Acting like you're accomplishing something here
By being against something

Honey, you can be against a freight train
But the train ain't what's going to get flattened

And that idjit our daughter is marrying
Is the four o'clock to grandkid station
And don't you give me that look
Like you didn't know Katie
Has a few extra pounds on her
After weighing the same damn thing
Her entire life

She's not the kind of girl that would throw together a wedding
In less than forty-eight hours
Unless something was wrong

So believe you me
We're going to have ourselves a grandkid
In about nine months
Give or take forty-eight hours
And if you think I'm going to be one of those women
Who doesn't see her grandkids
Or doesn't go to her daughter's wedding
Or doesn't do anything
Because her husband disapproves
Then I suggest you take out our wedding album
And remind yourself
Who it is you married

Now I'm leaving

You can stay here if you want
And when I come back
I better find you painting the upstairs room pink
Because the way Katie's carrying she's going to have a girl
And don't tell me I'm wrong
My mother was a gypsy
I can always tell the gender of a baby
And the ripeness of fruit
It's my gift

If you don't stay here
Then I suggest you put on the tux
I have waiting upstairs for you on our bed
And come to the church with me
So that you can walk your daughter down the aisle
And say 'To hell with my pride and what I want and what I expected because my daughter is alive and healthy and that makes me luckier than most of the people on this damn planet so I'm going to smile and suck it up and dance the Hully Gully with my wife like we don't have a care in the world.'

Now you can do what you want, Charles
That's what I want you to remember
That what you do
Is entirely up to you

But I would also ask you to remember
That my Daddy didn't come to our wedding
And my Mama outlived him
And when he died
He looked like a husk
When the corn rots from the inside
And when Mama died
She was smiling like the Lord filled her up with honey

Think about that Charles
Then you let me know
What you wanna do