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New YearAriaNew Year’s Eve arrived the way New Year’s Eve always arrived with the specific pressure of a date that required you to feel something particular whether or not you were inclined to.I was inclined.This year specifically, for the first time in a while, I was inclined.Leah had proposed something small her apartment, just the people who mattered, no countdown event, no crowded bar, no performance of celebration. Just the people and the midnight and whatever the year had been and whatever came next.Her apartment was exactly what Leah’s apartment was organized in a way that looked effortless and wasn’t, warm, full of the specific things she’d accumulated over years of knowing exactly what she liked, with a view of the city from the window that was better than she ever acknowledged because she found it slightly embarrassing to live somewhere this nice.We arrived at nine.David came with Thomas, which had become the default configuration for David at social events not beca

The Week Before EdinburghAriaFive weeks into January I started packing.Not because I needed five days to pack for a week in Edinburgh — I didn’t, I was a competent adult who could pack a suitcase in forty minutes — but because packing felt like doing something toward it, and doing something toward it felt better than just waiting.Caden found me on a Tuesday evening with the suitcase open on the bedroom floor and approximately three outfits in it surrounded by approximately seven more that I was assessing.He looked at the suitcase.Looked at me.“You have five days,” he said.“I know,” I said.“You’re a week early,” he said.“I’m aware,” I said.“You’re excited,” he said.“I’m prepared,” I said.“You’re excited and you’re managing it through preparation,” he said.I looked at him.“Don’t psychoanalyze my packing,” I said.“I’m not psychoanalyzing it,” he said. “I’m accurately describing it.”“Same thing,” I said.He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the seven outfits arraye

The BuildingAriaWe walked.William said it was fifteen minutes and it was exactly fifteen minutes, which I suspected was a number he’d calibrated over thirty years of living in this city and walking to this building regularly, the way you calibrate distances to places that matter.Edinburgh in February was cold in a different way from Minnesota cold.Drier. Sharper. The wind had an edge to it that came from a different geography, from hills and sea rather than plains, and it made the city feel more present somehow, more there, the way places feel when the weather requires you to pay attention to them.I walked between Caden and William.James was slightly ahead, the architect’s instinct pulling him toward the built environment, reading the streets the way he read every street.Eleanor had stayed at the house to finish the rehearsal dinner preparations, which she’d agreed to with more grace than I expected until she’d squeezed my arm at the door and said quietly — this one is for th

SaturdayAriaI woke at seven.Not from anxiety. Just — awake. The specific alertness of someone whose body had decided this morning was not a morning for sleeping through.Caden was asleep beside me.Actually asleep, which was unusual for him — he was normally the first one up, the four thirty alarm man, the person who had already been in the kitchen for an hour by the time I came downstairs. But it was seven in Edinburgh in February and yesterday had been a lot and he was asleep with the complete unbothered stillness of someone whose body had also made a decision.I lay there and looked at the ceiling of William’s guest room.Today was my wedding day.I turned that over.My wedding day.In Edinburgh.In a building with good light.To a man who had memorized a page and a half of speech notes and had called my best friend and my mother and his biological father before proposing and who looked at me like I was the first real thing he’d ever seen and who told me last night that he’d be

Sunday In EdinburghAriaSunday was ours.Just ours — no ceremony, no dinner to organize, no video calls scheduled, no documentary camera. Just Edinburgh and the people in it and a day that had no agenda except being exactly what it was.We slept until nine.Both of us.I woke first and lay there listening to the city waking up outside William’s window and thought — we’re married. Again. Because I was going to keep thinking it for a while and I’d decided to let myself.Caden woke at nine fifteen and immediately reached for me in the way he reached for me every morning now, the unconscious check that I was there, and I was there, and he settled.“Morning,” he said.“Morning,” I said. “We’re married.”“We are,” he said.“Still surprising,” I said.“Give it time,” he said.“How much time,” I said.“I’ll let you know when it stops,” he said.I turned over to look at him.He was looking at the ceiling with the expression he wore on Sunday mornings — the fully relaxed version, nothing manag