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“Nervous?” Iris asks me, helping me with the flower on my lapel.
I feel my head stabbing a nod as I ask her the same.
Iris and Phil are renewing their wedding vows as part of our own little anniversary ceremony we have every year.
We do it all again—the dress, the flowers, the big church with an organ playing, and our family.
Iris and Phil, plus the James Jr., Jeanette, and Jaxon Jones I only ever dreamed of having once.
All here and together every year to celebrate.
Just us.
To celebrate our family and the bond with my wife. Today is also about Phil and Iris always showing Jasmine and me just how long true love lasts.
“Wait sixty-three years, James. Love her like you do a little more every day. Grow old together. Laugh and cry together, and yeah, even get a little nervous,” Iris tells me. Her voice fills with emotion, and her eyes are a little misty, but they’re not sad tears.
“I’d be nervous if I wasn’t nervous,” I add, hearing the tremor in my own voice.
Knowing I’d never forgive myself if I forgot, even for just one day. For one second, even, but I know I never could forget—never forget just how amazing Jasmine and our three beautiful babies are.
The life we have together now… I’d be nervous if I took it for granted, is what I’m saying.
“Well… shall we?” Iris asks, and I offer her my arm.
Helping her slowly but surely to the altar, joining my wife, who is right by Phil in his wheelchair. His withered hand reaches for Iris’s and squeezes it in a way I guess only sixty-three years of loving someone so much could.
My own hand finds Jasmine’s, looking down at her, mouthing the words “I love you” to her for the twentieth time today. I know our love will last just the same. When you find the one, many problems you may have disappear because nothing else matters.
Iris knows it. Phil knows it. Now Jasmine and I know it.
My eyes feel a little itchy. Must be the A/C in the church or something, but looking down at the kids… Little James Jr. in his tuxedo. In their most formal onesies, his brother and sister, Jaxon and Jeanette, gurgling and kicking in their strollers.
It’s quite a sight, and one I’ve never been prouder of or more fulfilled to be a part of.
Our family. Us.
Jasmine and James Jones. Renewing our vows every time we touch or say I love you. Or when we make love in other ways.
For now, it’s with words, and I feel more than just one tear rolling down my cheek once Jasmine and I exchange the vows we make anew every year.
It’s Little James Jr. who really undoes me and everyone else as he reads a poem he wrote about his mommy and daddy who get married every year, and his grandma and grandpa as he calls them. The kind of thing that only a three-year-old could come out with. It melts all our hearts because it’s just like him and all our little babies. It’s real, and it’s from the heart.
After Jasmine and I say “I do” all over again, Jaxon groans, then claps when we kiss. Now it’s Iris and Phil’s turn.
Jasmine lifts the babies up, and all of us huddle closer, watching and listening, learning really. Two people who’ve shared so much and still do after so long. It only makes Jasmine and me feel like we’ve just begun the most amazing journey of our lives, and I can’t wait.
I hope the next sixty years are slow, long, and as great as the past four. It’s made me feel four years old because my life only started the day I met her—the day I plucked my favorite flower.
My Jasmine.
Mine.
EPILOGUE
THIRTEEN YEARS LATER
Jasmine
