On March 19, 1949, from his Army post at Camp McGill in Japan, my grandfather wrote to my grandmother’s father in Asheville, North Carolina: “Perhaps the fact that she and I have spent so much time together has led us to believe that we are in love, whereas we have merely afforded one another much-needed companionship in a strange country and have mistaken our feelings. I really cannot say that we haven’t made that mistake.”

            A pair of porcelain Japanese dolls sank into my grandparents’ cake. No one traveled halfway around the globe for the wedding. The photographer accidentally destroyed the film and only one picture remains. This picture could be an advertisement for skin cream. They look so young and so flawless. Filled with hope and fear.

            Now, fifty-eight years later, my grandmother’s wedding dress hangs on a rod in the middle of our apartment. It is also my wedding dress. At times, it’s an angel, hovering three feet off the floor. Other times, it’s a ghost and frightens us. Yesterday, we fought. He thought I should put the dress away before the guests arrived; I said there was no room in the closet for such a precious thing, and why would we want to bury my grandmother—you mean your grandmother’s dress—away? Though all along I agreed with him. 

            My grandfather wrote: “Letters to someone who is more or less a stranger always seem to be difficult, especially letters that are particularly important. I’m afraid this will be such a letter.”

            I remember my grandfather telling my grandmother to stop eating ice-cream. I remember him ordering martinis. I remember him avoiding the word "love."

            Soon, I will marry someone who says that life is a series of intersecting lines, that there is an infinite number of possible intersections, that we have arrived at one such intersection and that it is not such a bad intersection. In fact, quite a good intersection.