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To Kiwi & Stone

This past weekend, I stood next to my best friend as she married her best friend. In the days of their celebration, life felt like love wrapped in light.  I found myself a student, wide-eyed and inspired by the teachers that stood before me--Kiwi and Stone, hand-in-hand exchanging vows.  Southern sunshine and a Georgia breeze carried a gentle refrain through the weekend: It is as it should be.

When it came time to toast the happy couple, my words could not catch up with my feelings.  The kind that originate in the deepest wells of the spirit and spend years marinating in life experience.  The kind that have been with you for so long that any articulation feels like an insult to the true character of their meaning. 

So here I sit, days later and hundreds of miles away, casually thumbing through Walden Pond for no good  reason but to check up on my friend Mr. Thoreau.  I should learn not to be surprised when the book casually falls open to everything I should have said.  Henry is always looking out for us writers that way.

What is commonly called Friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues. But sometimes we are said to love another, that is, to stand in a true relation to him, so that we give the best to, and receive the best from, him. Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love; and in proportion to our truthfulness and confidence in one another, our lives are divine and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. There are passages of affection in our exchange with mortal men and women, such as no prophecy had taught us to expect, which transcend our earthly life, and anticipate Heaven for us... What other words, we may almost ask, are memorable and worthy to be repeated than those which love has inspired? It is wonderful that they were ever uttered. They are few and rare, indeed, but, like a strain of music, they are incessantly repeated and modulated by the memory. All other words crumble off with the stucco which overlies the heart. We should not dare to repeat these now aloud. We are not competent to hear them at all times.

So there it is: the words are rare, but thankfully, when it comes to Kathleen and Austin, the music is not.  I am proud of many things I have accomplished in my life, but after this weekend, I know that the highest honor among them is to love and be loved by such extraordinary people. 

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