When traveling, I don’t like committing to much in advance. I don’t make hotel accommodations until I know what train I’m arriving on, and I don’t know what train I’m arriving on until I know what city we’re going to next. And I don’t know what city I’m going to until…well, you get the idea: when contemplating tomorrow on the road, I prefer waiting until today has more or less become yesterday. After a year of traveling together, Carol has essentially adopted the same approach. Turns out there’s been a lot of winging it in her life, so traveling with me has not been the hair pulling and gut wrenching experience for her that it would be for most people.

You never have to retire from happiness…

And so it was one fresh and promising-of-nothing-in-particular morning that I casually mentioned to Carol that it would be a good day to go looking for an engagement ring. Since she had had her coffee, showered and straightened up the clutter in the house I had managed to create the previous day while hardly moving from the couch, Carol had nothing else on her plate for the day, so she agreed.

…or from silliness, either

It’s not that we are indifferent or lackadaisical about the idea of two people deciding to spend the rest of their lives together (even when one of them is actively engaged in the world around them, and the other is always in danger of being mistaken for a figurine), it was in fact a strong sense that Carol and I were engaged and married the moment we formally introduced ourselves in a mall parking lot, after having spent the previous seven weeks conversing via PM. For two widows in their sixties, marriage presented itself as natural and ordinary as trying out a new stool softener.

Until whenever do us part

And so it was that I carried that engagement ring around England waiting for the right moment to get down on one knee. (My only pre-thought was to make sure I was close to something solidly anchored to use to get back up again. The moment arrived on a wet, late morning in the little seaside village of Morecambe. Everything fell into place. I positioned myself next to a concrete bench. I planned to use the plastic bag I carried around to replenish our room wine to protect my knee from the wet pavement. The backdrop of the sea provided the appropriate metaphor for eternal possibility. All that was missing was Carol, who was too busy photographing the seaside village to be bothered at the moment with an edifying detail such as a marriage proposal. We celebrated with a prosecco in a nearby pub.

“It’s not that we are indifferent or lackadaisical about the idea of two people deciding to spend the rest of their lives together (even when one of them is actively engaged in the world around them, and the other is always in danger of being mistaken for a figurine)”

At first glance you would not take us for a compatible couple. At second glance you’d still be wondering if I was even breathing. But here we are, a year or so later having spent the equivalent of a lifetime now qualified for Social Security as total strangers, hopping on trains, then hopping off them, and schlepping to a hotel that GPS is once again misdirecting us to.

It’s a metaphor for a companionship that we hope our legs continue to hold up for.