One in...

OK. So, what are the chances, if you take a random girl born in Iowa, and a random boy born in Catalonia, that they have a friend in common?

Let's just say, for the sake of argument...one in a million.

And then? Boy and girl meet. In another random place. Say, Austria. And they don't know they have a friend in common.

So, what are the chances, that when she goes to visit him for the first time, that THIS friend, the one-in-a-million friend who connects them without them knowing it (already a phenomenal coincidence), is AT the airport at the exact moment that the girl arrives at the airport to see the boy, nervous as all get-out? She hasn't seen the friend for a couple of years since he dated her pal while they were at Taizé in France, and he hasn't seen the friend for over a year since they studied together in Italy, but when the boy is about to go find the girl at airport arrivals, he runs into the friend and tells him to hold on, and then brings her over a few minutes later to introduce her, and she says, "hey I KNOW you!"

Let's just say the chances are...one in a billion.

You've probably figured out by now that the girl is me, and the boy is the Mister. This story happened just over ten years ago, and we got married five years ago today on a perfectly sunny happy day in Vermont. I still get goosebumps when I think about that day I flew to Barcelona for the first time, to meet a boy I liked, and how we ran into this guy we both knew, like we had lived around the corner from each other all our lives.

I guess we sort of had, just in a more...global sense.

***

This morning I took a peek at my wedding dress, hanging in a closet at my in-laws' house. It's still as perfect and as glowy as I remember, much like our wedding itself. Every memory of that day is suffused in a peaceful light, because--as all weddings should be--it was a day of true promises, simple beauty, the love of family and friends, and the joy of shared hope for the future.

I admit to being one of those insufferable people, who, when she reads about weddings in glossy magazines or blogs, however adorable or fancy or beautiful or clever, smugly thinks that OUR wedding was the best. Well, of course it was, because it was ours.

***

This post is probably really disjointed, because we've just come home from (a real! live!) date at a restaurant designed by none other than Antoni Gaudí himself, where we ate delicious fancy food and drank a whole bottle of wine. I haven't had half a bottle of wine in I don't know how long, so it's making me both sleepier and more verbose than usual. The Mister's parents are here as kangaroos (which is what they call babysitters in Spanish/Catalan), and it turns out that after we put our little munchkin to sleep and tiptoed away to our date, he woke up and watched TV with the grandparents, king of the castle and adamant refuser of sleep. Ah well, it was totally worth it.

***

Here's to five (and five before that) beautiful years, my one in a billion. I love you.