"People change"

I bid my father goodbye as the wedding wrapped up. He lauded the event and the venue to the skies: "Not only could I not have done better, I couldn't have done this well," he said. Damn, I thought, high praise from this man.

Then he stepped closer and got that confidential look. I stood on the dance floor, he below, putting us eye to eye. "I'm wishing you guys well," he said, "but people change."

"What?" Adam said when I told him, his voice going to that pitch I rarely hear, the anger pitch. "What did he say to you?"

The thing is, he likes Adam. "He can read the hell out of a map," he said after Adam managed to navigate us around Cambridge that time that we met up with my dad in England, he on business, we on pleasure. He's sat in our living room, grinning as we bantered.

I told Adam it wouldn't matter. Of course my dad said something like that. I'm protective of my parents. Strange given what I grew up with?

Not really. What he said didn't anger me. It didn't affect me.

People change, sure. Adam and I have both changed substantially since we became best friends nearly six years ago, since we began dating three and a half years ago. Could something happen to throw us off track? Sure.

But we work every day to prevent that. We talk to each other, we fight, we explain ourselves and figure each other out.

I've married the only man I've ever loved, the only man who's ever really meant anything to me. That sure as hell counts for something.