A New Beginning at an Old Beginning

I have one last thing I wanted to share about our New Mexico trip before I get the heck on with it. One of the highlights of the visit, for me, was this moment here:

It might not look so special, but it is. When J first came to Santa Fe, and first met my dad, he (ahem...at the last possible minute after wussing out all weekend...ahem) had the guts to ask dad if, hey, nice to meet you, mind if I marry your daughter? My dad ran him off with a shotgun.
Kidding! He poured us all champagne, and the next morning J and I rushed out to the city, all exuberant and ready to get official. We ended up in this Trading Post, where he bought me a $25 fake diamond ring and barely made it out the door before pulling it out of the little paper sack and asking me-in the exact spot where Little One and I are standing- to be his wife. It was New Years Day, I said yes, and we went around the corner and kissed in public by the ice sculptures.
I had lived in Arizona for a long time then, and I remember thinking about how extra magical it was to be right there at that moment, in the place I was born and was a child and grew up. How lovely it was to be in the place of my beginning, to embark on another beginning, a new life.
Now I look at that picture up there, and I find myself thinking the same thing. How Little One and I are standing there, at the place where this family began, where in a way Little One began. And to know, now, that though you can't see it, in that picture there is the beginning of another new life.
There is a magic in the bones of New Mexico. It's in the mesas and the sunsets, the spices and the turquoise. It shimmers in the aspen leaves and smells like chamisa and becomes your bones too. They don't call it the land of enchantment for nothing.