My baby girl's getting married...

I've known it for a long time. I've longed for it much longer. But today it hit me for the first time that my baby girl is getting married in October.

I couldn't be happier for her and for Tim. Tim and Mimi have been a couple for over a decade. They've lived together for most of that time. I was used to that and it seemed right. Then, six months or so ago (my problem with linear time and all!) they got engaged.

Delighted as I was, it seemed perfectly normal and I settled into that.

Then, for the last few days, we've been making reservations for the hotel in Brooklyn and it hit me between the eyes--my baby girl is getting married....

Even while I was getting permission from the Diocese of Long Island (Brooklyn is part of that Diocese, go figure...) and the City Clerk of New York City to officiate at their wedding, it didn't totally sink in. Mimi's getting married.....

Tim is one of the best guys ever. He's a computer guru (works for Linked In) and a talented musician. He went to Bennington with Mimi, a year ahead and just friends. And when both of them were in NYC, they found each other in a real way.

For the last five years or so (somewhere between 3 and 6--linear time and all that...) Tim and Mimi have gone to Oak Island, North Carolina with us for a week in September, just after Labor Day when no one with kids are there. We went to Oak Island for almost 20 years (until the kids didn't want to be in such an isolated place for several weeks). The first time was after my first year at Virginia Seminary, with three other couples from my class, two of whom were from North Carolina and had known the place. The second summer, Bern was pregnant with Josh. Every year after that until Josh (in high school) didn't even want to go if he took a friend. Then, over a decade later, Mimi called and asked where it was we used to go so she and Tim could go. After that she insisted we needed to go together and we have, along with John and Sherry, two old friends. It's always a blast and Tim is an integral part of it all.

We love him. I introduced him, even before this marriage thing, as "almost my son-in-law".

I couldn't be more delighted.

But she's my baby girl--certainly not a baby or a girl anymore--a full grown woman who makes more money than I ever did as a Development Officer for Jacob's Pillow, a dance place in the Berkshires. She has two apartments...one in Brooklyn and the other in Stockbridge, MA. She is frighteningly smart, remarkably kind and beautiful as can be.

I've been looking at the pictures of her scattered about our house. Three of them are my favorites. First, she's 3 in a tank top and shorts, running recklessly down a hill in my father's yard, face as serious and intense as only a 3 year old can have running recklessly. The second is in a door way in the suite Bern and I stayed in when Josh was graduating from Law School. Her arms are thrown out like a character in a Broadway Musical and she is smiling to beat the band. And my favorite of all is one time took of the side of her face when she was smiling and her dimple looks like a hole in her face. (My second cousin, Kim, who is maybe ten years younger than Mimi, took me aside when she was 5 and Mimi was 15 and said, in a whisper, "Mimi has holes in her cheeks!" That's how pronounced Mimi's dimples are when she smiles.

She was the worst baby ever for the first six months--crying, arching her back when you tried to hold her, never sleeping. Then, at six months, something in her brain flipped and she became the most charming, wondrous, engaging child ever. And as an adult, none of that has changed.

Sometimes, she calls me 'Baba', what she called me as a small child. I have a photo of her taken in Australia when she was there, tan and lovely and holding a post-it note that says, "Hi, Baba"...how did I leave that out of my favorite pictures of her...?

And she's getting married. Be still my heart....