When the least likelys become the so much mores . Time in a Bottle as Jim Croce penned- “But there never seems to be enough time/ To do the things you want to do, once you find them / I’ve looked around enough to know / That you’re the one I want to go through time with…”

My niece planned her wedding day with very specific details all her own. With little time, in short order, she piled on the loving job of assembling her wedding day. And so the walk through their path of life commences.

We cried, we kvelled and we pray in our hearts that their beginning, middle and so on unfolds in the casual, detailed, seemingly effortless way this blessed day played out. Nothing more precious to me then seeing your sister’s daughter enter this “very grown-up” phase of life. I watched her enter this world and I now have watched her walk into another room. 

For the very first time,  on this day, she is a Mr. and Mrs.; no longer the baby I held, the little girl I helped with homework or so simply the young lady who gathered degrees to hopefully insure  her success in the work arena. The collection of happy tears I have shed throughout my nieces life are held in a jar, sitting on my mantel of memories, front row center. You have continued to be a sense of joy and have added strength to my weakest days. I have felt your determination, your spirit when I watched you cheer at a football game and serve a meal to the less fortunate. 

You live your life with selfless giving. On this day my “precious child,”- you accepted and reveled in how the giving was now the receiving. Be safe in knowing your husband sees what I knew all along. There is a very short line for the altruistic people who first think of others . You are up there looking at the line that waits behind you. You are the heroine in my long story. I now have a bigger collection of happy tears prominently sitting in the jar on the mantel of my life.