July 18, 2008 2:30 pm

“I don’t get many things right the first time

In fact I am told that a lot

Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls

Brought me here.”

Looking back Jim would say that it wasn’t the perfect moments that defined their relationship. It wasn’t about the moments where everything would align and make sense and fit and work perfectly. How could it be when they were such imperfect people?

Yes, they fit together. They fit together in a way that no one really could understand. It wasn’t like they made each other whole but in being together – they made something else whole, complete, perfect. Something cosmic, eternal and it would be easy to say that it was fate that brought them together, that by an act of destiny they were able to overcome everything that kept them apart. And someone said something one time along those lines to them but Pam and Jim just laughed, looked at each other and knew that it was a lot more than that.

From the beginning – and it was ironic because he couldn’t even really remember the beginning. Nothing about that moment when Pam first walked into the office told him to remember it. There hadn’t been a clap of thunder, an opening of the heavens, even a feeling under his skin that at that moment… He remembered that she was wearing a pink shirt, that he appreciated the new face, that Michael said something stupid. He remembers…

“It will be your job to revive me when I die of boredom.”

… not a lot. And the moment slipped him by and million more after and she was just this woman he worked with, got along with, could make laugh in this really beautiful way that made the whole room warm. That was it really – and when did it happen? When did that change? Again, it should have been this huge earth shattering moment but he just woke up one day and he could see her smile when he closed her eyes and he could hear her laugh and he couldn’t even remember when that hadn’t been true.

“So what would you do if you weren’t here?”

He always thought he could leave. He thought he could get away from Dunder- Mifflin. After all, he had always promised himself that he wouldn’t stay there past five years. And that was easy to think about whenever the phone rang and it was a dissatisfied customer or whenever he could hear that faint tell tale click when Michael’s door was about to open – then it was easy to think that he could stand up one day, walk out and never come back. But something about her smile…

She made it easier to stay, to live through it all and even more than that… she made it easier to think that he wouldn’t need much more than this his whole life. And what was a career really? Just a way to make money and why should that be so important? Maybe in the beginning it wasn’t even about her so much. It could have been anyone really. He didn’t want to live for paper and sales calls and the nine to five. He wanted to live for that feeling he got in his stomach when she smiled at him. But it could have been anybody.

“Well I’ll just have to come up with an excuse to get you to come over and visit me.”

It’s easier to remember when that changed, when it was her, only her… when he stopped thinking about the anybody.

One day she just… she seemed to need him too. Need his smile, need his laughter, his touch and she’d walk over to his desk like a kid with something mischievous up her sleeve and she’d talk to him like she just needed to hear the sound of his voice. He convinced himself that this wasn’t true, that she didn’t need him, that it was all in his head but somewhere, somehow he knew…

“Maybe the cameras will find something that everyone else is missing.”

They fell into this pattern, this way of life that was comfortable and easy and so very Jim and Pam of them in a way that only they knew what that meant and she talked to him in a way that he didn’t think she talked to anyone else, including Roy and there were times – little snippets of moments when maybe, maybe…

“I just wanted to say thanks.”

He didn’t know why he was thinking about all this now. Why he was thinking about it while pacing up and down a beach while the clouds were moving in except that he’s trying to create a catalog in his head of all those moments. Those little moments that seemed meaningless, those moments that he barely remembers, the imperfect moments that define them, make them Jim and Pam because it wasn’t about fate or destiny bringing together two soul mates. They had each worked so fucking hard for it, to get to this place, this moment, this incredibly perfect imperfect moment. And that was enough.

She had said it before, life was never going to be perfect. Life was never going to just even out and flatten and just be perfect and right and even just thinking about it like that – he doesn’t want it and she doesn’t either – not anymore.

Life is fucked up and strange and sublimely complex and he wouldn’t give that up. Not for all the perfect moments in the world.

In the beginning it was hard. From that moment when he knew it was her, when he gave up on the anybody, when he stopped looking further – nothing was more painful. Nothing was more painful than seeing her walk out the door every night with another man. Nothing was more painful than when he would see those little snippets of the maybe, the possibility for more…

“I think that’s why you’re the only person I would want to be up here with right now.”

There were times when he would sit in bed and hate that, hate his life, the person he had become, sitting behind a desk and only watching the possibilities, the maybes slipping through his fingers. Years later – and fucking hindsight for always becoming clear too late – he knew that he couldn’t give that up, trade it in, go back and do it over. Those moments of pain and anguish and complete desperation… those were the moments that made them. Those were the moments that defined them.

“Your whole life isn’t written out for you. Not yet.”

The sky was becoming steadily darker and he checked his watch and shook his head because it was just so typical. She had almost broken her tailbone seconds after their first kiss and he had gotten food poisoning after their first date and so why wouldn’t it rain?

Someone asked him if he was nervous, if he was ready but the question barely registered and he shook his head in distraction. He thought about how he was never really nervous around her exactly. She didn’t reduce him to jitters and sweaty palms… although… well, she never really made him nervous. There were times though – the times where he really did wish he could take things back – times in the beginning when he hadn’t known what to say. Or he had known only he couldn’t say it and words would come out of his mouth that were just so stupid and hurtful and why did he say that?

“You’re right. We didn’t dance. It was more like swaying. But still romantic.”

So wasn’t really nerves that caused him to pace up and down the beach and wasn’t a fear of what to say and wasn’t even the fear that for some reason she was going to run out on the whole thing. Because he knows…

No. It’s more that he’s trying to put his finger on something, maybe on what he’s done to deserve her because despite everything he knows that he doesn’t. She’s so much better… she’s beautiful and warm and funny and when she’s sleeping she tucks her hand under her chin and she scrunches up her nose when she’s confused and she loves him and no, he doesn’t deserve her but that doesn’t really matter anymore either. It wasn’t easy but he managed to get to this place where he wasn’t so scared she was going to leave him and when he was with her those insecurities – well, they would always be there. They just didn’t matter as much anymore.

“That feels about right.”

He wanted to give her everything and he would have given her a wedding with all the flowers she wanted and a dress they couldn’t afford and a church with stain-glass windows. Before the longest engagement Dundee, before the postponements and the disappointments and the second drunken proposal, he had heard her talking with Phyllis about the perfect wedding. About how she had pictured in her head for so long how perfect everything would be and that’s what he wanted to give her, something more than a VA hall and a local band and a fiancé who didn’t need to be bothered with her thoughts and feelings.

When he said something to her she had just laughed. Those plans, those dreams, they weren’t so important anymore and they were just something to hold on to, a way to convince herself that maybe life could be perfect.

“I figured, you know, you went to a lot of trouble and it means a lot.”

Part of him has always wanted the same thing- that ultimate dream in the sky, the unattainable. He’s a romantic, a dreamer… of course he is, how could he not be? How could he save a hot sauce packet for two years and not be a bit of a sentimental schmuck? She teased him about this sometimes. When she’s making tea and they both remember… remember… remember and he gets this look in his eyes like he’s in another place. She teased him for all those things that she loves about him and he knows this and sometimes he can’t remember why he didn’t tell her the things he should have earlier. How did he let so many years so by? Silence and awkwardness, silence and awkwardness and all the romantic notions in the world couldn’t make him say something.

“I figured you should hear it from me. Rather than – I mean, you know Michael.”

Or maybe it was exactly that. That was what kept him quiet for so long. That was what kept him loving her from a distance. Part of him was afraid of fucking the whole thing up. And he still feared this. That maybe all their imperfections would be too much, too overwhelming and all the love and hard work in the world wouldn’t keep them together.

It could have been the stupidest thing in the world to propose to her on the bedroom floor. To just let those words, those feelings finally just escape. For once! He finally said something. Finally, finally just said what was on his mind. And it could have ended everything. It really could have. But she had looked at him like… like she knew why he said it and then she was saying yes and laughing and kissing him like she wanted to for the rest of her life.

“You can tell me anything.”

Now he was standing barefoot on the beach, his hair tousled by the wind, his skin sticky with salty sea air and their whole relationship up till that point was in front of him, spread out in a mosaic of words and images and it wasn’t always beautiful and it wasn’t always perfect and sometimes it hurt more than anything but it was everything… everything. All the choices and the stumbles and the tears… he could have just stood still, he could have just let it all go by, could have just let life happen to him, trying as hard as possible not to get hurt along the way.

“Being happy… It shouldn’t be so hard. I mean, we make these decisions and…”

At some point though she had grabbed his hand and pulled him along with her and he just let go of it all, let go of the idea that there was some way to control the pain – it was ironic but that’s when he really felt it for the first time – that lightness, that happiness, the fluttering falling feeling – that life didn’t have to be perfect, they didn’t have to be perfect. But –

Someone made a noise and it broke him from the rambling thoughts in his mind. He looked down the beach he saw her, the white knee length dress fluttering in the wind, her hair blowing around her face, the smile…

She winked at him and even from the distance he could tell she was laughing and he had to take a deep breath to calm the welling in his chest. Love, pride, complete and utter adoration for this woman who was walking toward him and laughing into the wind like nothing else in the world mattered but that moment. This moment.

“This. You and me. When did this happen?”

Their families were there. Just family. When she said she wanted to keep it simple she meant it and she didn’t have a bridesmaid or seating arrangements or a bad D.J. because she didn’t want this day to be about any of that. And he loved her because he knew she really meant it. So it was just their families, scattered around them, smiling, whispering about how beautiful she looked and whether or not it really would rain.

Jim didn’t see any of this, didn’t see the family, didn’t hear the waves crashing on the shore or the seagulls flying overhead. It was just her, her smile, the flowers that were woven into her hair and the way she laughed as she walked toward him, took his hand…

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

They smiled at each other and he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles and felt the way she was almost shaking with anticipation.

“You cold?”

She shook her head and never stopped smiling.

“I kissed you because… because you’re Jim.”

And maybe life couldn’t be perfect and maybe even a moment couldn’t be perfect but everything was just so full in this place, in her smile and he felt again like together they completed something, something bigger than themselves…

“I, James Ryan Halpert take you…"

They had talked about writing their own vows, making it even more casual and informal but after a week of agonizing over what he would say he finally told her that there really wasn’t anything to say or, if he was going to really say it all then they were going to be there for way too long and who wants to stand on the beach in the sand for hours on end?

“I, Pamela Jane Beesley take you…”

She had sighed in relief and hugged him hard because thank God, she couldn’t figure out the words either and neither of them had ever been good at words anyway. He had suggested that they stand around in awkward silence for a few minutes because that was more like them and Pam had rolled her eyes but laughed because it was true.

“… to have and to hold. To love and to cherish. For all the days of my life...”

Thunder sounded in the distance and he could feel a drop of rain hit his cheek. Pam made a face at him and he shrugged.

It really was typical.

“But maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe everything’s just… simple.”

The one thing that surprised him most was just how simple it had been. How simple to just one day wake up and be more than just her best friend. After all that time and worry and fear it really had been the easiest thing. To wake up with her in his arms, skin against skin, that first morning was just so normal, so typical, so everyday in a monumental kind of way. Never ever – he never, ever wanted to lose that.

Their eyes locked and he knew that no matter what…

“I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride.”

She bounced a little on her feet and threw her arms around his neck and he laughed into her hair as he enveloped her into his arms, as she pressed kisses to his neck.

“I think I’m the one that’s supposed to kiss you.”

Pam moved back a little. There was a brightness in her eyes and the rain was coming down even harder, plastering her hair to the sides of her face and she had to blink away raindrops as she looked at him.

“Do you think this is a bad sign?”

“Rain on our wedding day?”

She laughed, “Yeah.”

He looked up into the sky, then back down at her, pulled pieces of flower out of her hair and smiled, “Does it matter?”

“No.”

And with that he lifted her up off her feet a little and kissed her.

“And where was I before the day

That I first saw your lovely face

Now I see it every day

And I know

That I am

I am

I am

The luckiest.”

-- Ben Folds