37 Years

Winn’s Baptist Church, May 19, 1984.

I look at these two people and I don’t know what to think. They were so young and so incredibly unprepared for and ignorant of the ways of the world. They had no idea what they were doing or what they were in for. But you would never know it to look at them, all smiles and giddy expectations. They were in love. They had that going for them, and precious little else. My memories of that day aren’t as precise as Pam’s. I remember being terrified in the minutes leading up to my entrance into the sanctuary. I was down in the basement with my best man, Al Thomason, with sweaty palms trying to remember to breathe. When I got my cue I begin ascending the stairs from the basement into the church with my heart beating hot in my ears. I walked to the duct taped X on the red carpeting where I had been instructed to stand, took a deep breath and scanned the audience. Practically anyone who had been important to me in my 26 years on the planet were there all smiling back at me. Then suddenly a loud series of notes from the organ and everyone stood. That’s when I saw her...

It’s really the only clear moment of the proceedings in my recollection 37 years later. She was standing next to her Dad in the back of the church. The sight of her took my breath away, and for the first time in weeks I was calm. This thought passed through my head...I might have screwed up a lot of things in my life and I’m sure I will screw up a lot more before I’m done, but...this woman...I got this right. It was the most clear-headed, steely eyed thought to ever enter my mind before or since. And it is still manifestly true. 

If I had it to do all over again...I would.