that I stood at the front of an old Episcopal church in Asheville, NC and watched Jenny walk down the aisle in a beautiful white dress.

Today’s the day we got married.

Twenty years ago today.

Now we sleep with a baby between us.

That’s happened before…that we had a baby sleeping between us.

It’s something we are getting used to.

I think it would be smart to stop having babies by the time I’m 90.

That’s not so romantic to talk about on our 20th anniversary.

I look back a lot…I look back like I could figure out a path if my rearview mirror was clean enough.

I look back, and remember, and ponder…and I don’t really come to any understanding that really does much for me.

Most of the time, things are just as fuzzy as when I started my pondering.

One thing that is crystalline pure clear is that I couldn’t imagine a “me” without “them”.

I can’t do it anymore.

I know that I couldn’t imagine a me without her.

I met Jenny at a Christmas party 3 years before we were married.

I’d just moved to Asheville to start a job at a backpacking store.  It was part of my master plan, resume-building job adventure…and I’d only worked there a couple of weeks.

Jenny had just moved out with her family from Colorado and was on a first “date” with one of my co-workers at the store.

I thought the top of my head was going to pop off when I bent down to look in the car window to say hello.

Who was this girl? Why was my universe vibrating to a different frequency just because I looked in the window of a friend’s car…and there she was?

I spent the rest of the evening trying to spend time with her…without appearing to steal my friend’s “date”.

Stealthy and shy amore….glances at my future before I understood what a future could be.

Then the party was over, and after a “it was nice to meet you” handshake, we didn’t see each other again ….

for three years.

We’d met once…just that one time, and….I remembered her name was Jenny.  I remembered her…but didn’t think I’d ever see her again.

Until…I saw a girl with a black hat and a long black coat walking at the mall with her little sister.

It was HER!!!!  HER!!!!

Her.

She told me later that I scared her with my staring.

I thought I was being kind of “super-sleuthy” hiding behind a magazine.

Anyway, long story short, I got her number, we dated for a year, got married…then bip, bip, bip, bip….and we’re a family.

Wow.

That’s the story in a nutshell.

It’s not the complete story, though.

I can’t write the complete story in 500 words.  I don’t know how to do that.

I don’t know how to say that she moves me in 500 words.

I don’t know how to say that my universe still vibrates “better” because she’s in my life.

I can’t do that in 500 words.

Or even 513.

Thankyou for our anniversary, Jenny.