Here are the cookies I made for my cousin’s wedding this weekend. They’re from an old family recipe and their uniformity is essential. I offer them as visual aid for this post on simultaneity.

Today I wrote “simultaneity” to explain something and realized I’d never actually used that word before. Turns out it is a real word, adding credence to my theory that in a past life I was one of those monks who strived to codify the English language. I think I was the monk who argued for “strived” not “strove” so I was clearly not a Sumerian scholar, just a low-tier scribe with an attitude.

It would take a few centuries before the right monk would come along with a campaign for the written words everybody could support. It would take my fourth-great Grandmother surviving the Civil War to ensure that there would be Ross Sugar Cookies at the wedding.

Here is my cousin waiting for his cue to join his beautiful daughter and walk her up the aisle.

And here he is later saying sweet, funny, heartwarming things in his toast. I utterly lack the words to describe how special and sacred he is to me, to all of us, really. I’m so lucky our lives have had such essential, gracious simultaneity.