in a lovely little ceremony in a conference room of a Radisson in Bloomfield Hills. We were blessed to be surrounded by most of our favorite people in the world. My aunt performed the ceremony, which included readings from the Song of Solomon and Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet." None of the drama leading up to the wedding (isn't there always drama leading up to a wedding?) mattered. How the universe managed to bring me this man, born on the other side of the planet and then adopted into a family that lived all over the U.S. before landing here in Michigan, I'll never know. "God works in mysterious ways" is so cliche, but also so true.
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each others cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though the quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each others keeping, for only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together, for the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each others shadow.
~Gibran
Then, in no time at all, despite medical evidence that it would not happen so easily, we became parents to an amazing little girl...
and a few years later, her equally amazing little brother.
They grew...
And we grew...
And we continue to grow. And I will tell you, it is not always easy. Facebook and the internet in general have this way of helping everyone put their best foot forward - it allows you to literally edit out the messy stuff and present all the best parts of your life to the world at large without the balance of that day you went to the grocery store with your shirt on inside out and then proceeded to run into everyone you know, or those times when you're both so tired that you end up bickering over things so stupid it wasn't even worth the breath to argue about it. Behind all those pretty internet fronts, there's a real family, with real problems and real issues and real day to day drudgery that few people ever know about.
But there's real love, too.
