My two dear friends, Mike and Ashley, were recently married.
I stood in the wedding, in a double-breasted black tuxedo with a silver vest and tie.
Mike wore a black tuxedo with a gold vest. Ashley wore white.
I have known Mike for almost six years. We met the first week of our freshman year in college. I have known Ashley almost as long.
Standing in their wedding was not foreign to me--mine is the time of life when marriages crop up at a dizzying pace, and I have been in my share of them.
But something about Mike and Ashley's was very special to me, and I am still vibrating with the joy I received (an unintentional gift, doubtless, but one I took from the two of them with open arms). My brother wrote the music (Ashley walked in to the sound of a piccolo trumpet, spectacular and graceful).
Mike and Ashley wrote their own vows.
Mike and I have lunch together about once a week in a little restaurant roughly between our offices downtown, and I haven't had lunch there in two weeks because they have been on their honeymoon.
It's not that I couldn't have eaten there. It just feels funny to be there alone. So today as I was walking by this restaurant on my way to work, I was wondering whether or not I should go there for lunch. Frankly, I didn't want to go there alone.
And I came to work to find an email from Mike. He and Ashley just came back from their honeymoon in Zihuatenejo.
So we had lunch together today. He is very tan.
He gave me a gift from the two of them, wrapped in a piece of crinkled newspaper.
Gosh, I'm glad they're home.
