In graduate school I read about psychiatric patients who believed that they had lived past lives. The details they knew were so specific, it was hard to come up with other ways to explain the phenomenon. But if souls are recycled like that, then it’s possible your grandmother’s soul was already recycled, in which case she wouldn’t be watching our wedding. You, either.

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We had a really small wedding, a really quiet one, not like Ari and Jack’s black-tie extravaganza. Your grandfather offered to pay, which actually surprised me, since his life in Santa Fe seems to have somehow eclipsed his life as Ari’s and my father. We hardly ever see him, now that he moved. And we talk about once a month—but the conversations aren’t real. They seem more out of duty than out of a real desire to connect. But I’ve always had Ari. And now I have Ezra.

Ezra and I had talked about your grandfather’s offer, and we decided that we wanted to basically elope with our families. So I asked your grandfather if he would rent us all a huge house on the Riviera Maya for Memorial Day weekend and fly his rabbi down to marry us.

He said he’d pay for everyone’s flights, too, since it would still be less expensive than Ari’s wedding. So that’s what we did. Though Ezra’s parents insisted on paying for their own flights. And a chef, too.

It was so beautiful. We got married on the beach, under a canopy, behind this gorgeous house that had a swimming pool and palm trees with hammocks and swings hanging between them. It was called Villa Corazón, which is part of the reason we chose it. With the chef there all weekend, no one had to cook. And Ezra and I wrote our own vows—one set of vows that we would share, words that we would each vow to the other.

We vowed to love, honor, and respect each other always.

We vowed to choose each other, every morning, every afternoon, and every night.

We vowed to support each other in the hard times and in the wonderful ones.

And we vowed to do all we could to give each other our best selves until the end of our days.

Then, feeling the sand under my bare feet, I stepped forward so he could slide a ring on my finger and declare, “By this ring, you are consecrated to me as my wife by the laws of Moses and Israel.”

And then I slipped a ring on his finger, saying, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”