This is the work. It is ordinary work. It does not look like anything from the outside. But it is the thing I am trying to do, and I think it is the thing that will make the difference, more than the contract or the transfer clause or the check that arrived six weeks after the wedding.
The gap between who I have been in our relationship and who I want to be is smaller now than it was before February. Not closed. Smaller.
That is progress. I will take it.
## Finally: What the Venue Got Right
I have been thinking about Jordan Ellis since the wedding, in the way you think about someone who handled a hard thing well.
She was, throughout this entire situation, exactly what a professional in her position should be: clear about the contract, clear about the process, accessible when I needed information, neutral in her communication with all parties, efficient in the paperwork. She did not take sides. She did not offer opinions. She managed the transfer with the same professionalism she had managed the original booking, and when I thanked her for it at the reception she accepted the thanks graciously and without making anything of it.
But what I have been thinking about is the moment in my first call with her when she said: “We’ve done a few.” Meaning transfers. Meaning she had done this before, this process of one person handing off the client responsibility to another, this formal passing of the financial baton from one party to another because circumstances had changed.