So, I�m getting married in April.

My fianc� and I have reached the point in the process where we can envision what our wedding day will look like.

We will awake, no doubt after a night of too little sleep, dress casually and go decorate the reception hall. We�ll separate and probably not see each other again until It�s Time.

That�s what I�ll hear, right before my father escorts me into the church and down the aisle.

It�s at that moment in my visualization that I realize it�s been years since I held my daddy�s hand.

I�ve kissed him hello and hugged him goodbye, as any Southern-reared woman would, but I can�t remember the last time I held his hand.

I remember distinctly how his hands feel, how they seem to swallow mine, how rough the ridges on his palms feel. But I must�ve been a child the last time he held me in any sense.

I see him on average once a year. Our visits, at best, are a wary meeting of adversaries whose grasp of a mutual language has too many words of battle and too few of love.

We don�t know each other, really, and yet we know each other perfectly. It�s the intimacy of enemies.

Still, when It�s Time, he will come for me where I wait in a room across the courtyard from the church. He will extend his hand, and I will take it.

I can envision that much.

I�m too battle weary, though, to hope for more.

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