For Better or For Worse

Ten(!) years ago today Todd and I threw ourselves a wedding.

I wore my mother's dress

It was meant to be held outdoors, something you can do in Southern California in the middle of April.

The day before the wedding it rained. It rained and rained and rained. The pouring buckets sort of rain that Los Angeles gets on occasion. Not exactly what we had planned for the ceremony we had spent months imagining. But what are you going to do? The setting of the ceremony wasn't the point. The point was gathering with all these people we loved and getting the hell married already. So we staked out a new ceremony plan inside in the boring space where the dinner was to be held, did the rehearsal, and went on our way, determined to stay on point--the real point.

I woke up to sun the day of my wedding. The rain became a footnote in the Wedding Story, one of oh so many things that didn't go quite as planned that weekend. We laughed a lot that day.

Holy cannoli, we look so young

This is where Todd will likely break in to remind me that I actually sobbed for hours that the rain was ruining our wedding or something. But this much more practical response is how I remember it and I'm sticking to it because I've come back to this again and again in my adult life. Most things don't go the way I imagined, things both large (parenting) and small (nearly every haircut). When I've hypothetically actually yesterday afternoon fled to my bedroom so as not to lose my temper with the kids at the end of a long day and meanwhile said kids are in the hallway attempting to pick the lock--well, let's just say it's not always an enriching childhood of art projects and organic gardening we've got going here. (At least they were cooperating with each other in the lock picking project.) But I can always come back to the point of it all, try to make them feel safe and unconditionally loved, messy and improvised as that effort may be. I've been trying to practice that more and more lately: reminding myself of the capital-p Point and finding a way to make it there, letting the details fall as they may.

All that to say, in a strange and roundabout way, happy tenth anniversary to you, T.