Franklin

I have a mental snapshot of this moment. 

In the cinematic montage of our life together, this is the image I remember as the beginning.

The opening of a door.  You standing there, all darkness behind you.

If I could go back and tell us both in that moment, “this is it”, I wonder what we would have done differently.  There he is, there she is.

In the years following, I wonder how we would have chosen differently or how much harder we would have fought.  If we had known.

It took years for the knowing, though.  And the knowing didn’t heal.  You describe it as a funnel, two stars in orbit, with each rotation drawing closer until unity.  The knowing happened before the collision and beforehand we spent time close and reaching and healing.

Sunday night I stood in front of you, your hands in mine, and we vowed to love and protect each other forever.

We committed to the work of a lifetime of love.

And in brief, fleeting moments the image of you standing in the doorway transferred over yourself in front of me like a kaleidoscope. 

The obstacles we faced leading up to our wedding day were not unlike the challenges we’ve faced over the years.  Everything that it took to get to this day, every battle we fought, every plan changed, every moment of celebration was an effort to get us here.  To the merging of our lives.

Our children watched and celebrated and wept.  And so did our parents and our siblings and our friends.

All we had to navigate to get to this moment swirled around my head like the market lights and I have a deep knowing it took every hardship to build the resilience we now have.  I know it took the coming and the leaving and the staying and the birthing to build us up to be the two of us standing there.

We couldn’t have bypassed it all, and still ended up here.

But for the decades to come, where once I saw you standing in a doorway, I will now see you standing in the light.  Eyes on mine.  Hands over mine.