My fiance stripped down to her small smart panties as I folded her clothes and placed them on my lap. The nurse proceeded with the sonogram.

On the monitor it looked like some alien landscape. Data from a probe falling into some distant atmosphere. Eerie and hauntingly gorgeous in crisp black and white video, I find my love as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside.

I knew this all along of course, but the images, like rorschach paintings hanging in some lost and mysterious necronomicon nailed the facts shut.

The nurse left the room, the inner camera obscura theatre was dark and empty but for us and I warmed some water, soaked a wash cloth and wiped the slippery goo from her long thin body.

All is well.

It was a strange day, wet, gloomy, misty with fog, halos around streetlamps and headlights. The five females, being her family and myself walked with a cart through Sam's Club as they picked and discussed what items every wedding must have no matter how frugal the couple tying the knot may be and shoestring the budget.

Several times my eyes glazed over.

"Why am I here? I don't seem to be needed."

Several times I found them all huddled in a tight circle, closed with their backs to me discussing in murmurs while I stood alone on the outside.

"I'm not needed. This is not my place."

Several times I wondered as I ate a Tickle Me Elmo cupcake with bright Blue and surely carcinogenic frosting that stained my lips like a man drowned in murky water and dead from lack of oxygen, "Can I really make this work? Can I be what she and her daughters want and need? Am I just some sad clown that will only bring her down? Can she be happy and stress free with me in her life? That's what I want for her, happiness, but is it possible?"

Earlier I had found a card. I wrote in it and hid it in a bag of silly gifts that I picked out for her and the girls. Later she called me from her bed just before bedtime telling me how she enjoyed the card. It was a Happy 50th Anniversary card and I wrote in it as if it were the year 2061, she seemed to enjoy it.