The other day I drove by the woods where John proposed to me. I was on a time crunch, to get to a destination that escapes me now. As I rounded the corner I slowed down to let yesterday catch up. I gazed deeply, not only into the undergrowth, but into my heart. My hands on the wheel could almost feel the brown corduroy of the dress I was wearing thirty odd years ago, and my misted eyes could nearly see the brown goatee that embellished John's chin in grad school.

 

I peered into the bramble of trees that were the only living witnesses to our baby promises. Without words, I asked if they remembered our vows. They nodded respectfully in the wind. I could recall how Time paused that afternoon, like a six measure rest in a symphony. Music spilled all over the pages of our separate lives, like parallel staves, but after that moment the melodies intertwined into one cantata.

 

I thanked the forest for holding the pressing world at bay while two young people linked lives whose unfolding even we could not possibly predict.