endings and edges

today, this very friday morning, my dear dear Kimberly A. Barnes got married.

yesterday, one year ago, 23 August 2011, I arrived in the state of Texas to begin a meandering career as a graduate student.

three months ago I was spending my evening traipsing around Sighişoara, Romania. karaoke. pudding. a bit of rain. cobblestones and amazement. three months ago? yeah.

and on tuesday I traded my fabulous assistantship at the university press for a hopefully-just-as-fabulous assistantship as a graduate instructor. my last day of work was ... it's cliche beyond cliche to say 'bittersweet,' isn't it? it wasn't quite that. it was... sinking. that preemptive nostalgia, full of whispers from your future self that say 'you're going to miss this.' there's nothing you can do about it, either. in a year from tuesday I might look back on that last day and remember in vivid detail the paper-cuts and dust and boxes. the card (it's there on my desk for me to smile at still) from Joanna and Judith. the hugs and the pouty-sad faces and the promises to visit. or maybe I won't. and in two years? five years?

five years ago this month I was learning all about being a missionary service under the completely great supervision of Sister Lara Taylor (she has a blog and her name is Johnson now). how long ago that was. how much has changed since then.

in four months it will be Christmas eve.

hm. year marks. month marks. birth days. anniversaries. friend Hannah wrote about the whole weirdness of time and its ceaseless passage recently. we are here. have been here. were once there. all this insistent keeping track.

time.

change.

weddings.

all of this stuff just keeps happening.

the two of us in this photograph--Sister Kimberly Ann Barnes and I, in the blue truck we drove around the south side of Lethbridge for 3 months, entertaining ourselves and our cameras as we waited for whomever we were meeting that chilly February morning way back in 2008--did we know what was going to happen next? not a bit.

do we now?

well. she is going to be married. and I am going to go visit her in her new place in Oklahoma City, someday soon.

and what then?

more days, more months, more anniversaries, slicing up our existence and wrapping edges around all the things that end or change or for whatever reason need to be marked. more moments, freezing and melting and re-freezing.