An Epilogue in the Form of a Bouquet

The week after Boheme and Reverie were born, Danielle and Toby got married. And even though I was able to attend her bachelorette weekend, knowing I wouldn't make her wedding was heartbreaking because more than anything, I wanted to be there for her and Tobias, stand behind them, celebrate their love. I wanted to see Dani in her dress and throw flowers and cry over their beauty and happiness and the magic they so effortlessly exude when they're together. Always have.

Toby playing a song at The Piano Bar in Hollywood, 2007

... I wanted to be there to witness the woman I adore marry the man of her dreams.

As anticipated, their wedding was joyous and lively and full of music and laughter and Dani's handmade decorations that she spent months creating, the flags, the table settings, the tent she sewed on her living room floor.

Everyone pitched in to decorate. Her father hung the white lights from the barn and trees. Her friends and cousins dragged driftwood and seaweed in from the beach and built an altar. Magic:

And after they exchanged vows, surrounded by wild flowers and wild things, Tobias performed the song he wrote just for my friend Dani, in front of his family from Copenhagen and hers from California and together, everyone danced until dawn.

"It truly was the greatest day of my life," she said, as we flipped through photos and listened to the song Toby wrote for her, marveled at the bouquet she clutched as she came down the aisle.

Danielle's bouquet

Fast forward to now, to this week, almost three months post-wedding, Danielle and Tobias home from their honeymoon and back to work and life and the reality of driftwood altars being a thing of the past. Of post-wedding comedowns and a living room without a tent to sew. Of married life dressed-down without the champagne...

Dani texted me a photograph yesterday with the words: "I thought you'd appreciate this." In the picture was Dani's dried bouquet hanging from the windowsill... dead and yet... coming back to life? Yes! Somehow amidst the sticks and deceased flowers, the green had returned, new blossoms growing up toward the light. No explanation. No water. Just magic.

I'd never seen anything like it before. "How is that even possible?" and yet there it was, the perfect symbol of love and life and death and the cyclical nature of everything that matters. Of the regenerative quality of love, specifically marriage which is a tough against-the-odds enterprise to be sure.

The flowers were a sign. Not only for them in their early days of marriage but for me, coming up on my seventh year as a wife. Nature is miraculous in its ability to reveal its own poetry, that through time, distance, and against all odds, greenery always find a way to reveal itself, love wins.

GGC