Come live with me and be my love... ~ Christopher Marlowe

Tonight, with the spring breeze blowing gently through the windows and Adela running wildly in circles, exuberant over being let in on the secret, my best friend asked me to marry him. There was nothing triumphant or cathartic or particularly memorable about the moment -- it was just another moment in our lives. But that's what made it so beautiful and so precious: after I said yes, Adela came up behind Rodney and hugged him while he hugged me, and then we went on with our night.

In thinking about this marriage and this life, and in navigating the undercurrent of change that runs through each one of our days, I am constantly amazed by the sense that there are already deeply defined footprints in the sand ahead of us -- indications that we've been here before, perhaps in my dreams, and have carefully marked our course.

We've traveled this path together. We've been here before, and we're okay.

Last year, as Rodney and I recovered from our loss, we had to find new ways to share our love and trust and vulnerability again as our grief receded. It was a more difficult journey for me; his pain came from my unreachable isolation. But gradually, as I was able to tuck the miscarriage into the folds of my mind and my heart, safe and protected and authentically mine, I let our friendship lead us forward. We know what we want, we're in this together, and we're up for the challenge.

What I love about this life is that even though he's just asked me to marry him, we're sitting side by side in the living room, next to the open window with the darkness outside, both silent and content. There are no bells and whistles here. Adela is sleeping soundly in the next room and soon we'll be off to bed. He knows I don't need anything fancy and he knows, as I do, that this is an ordinary night that will eventually blur into the busy chaos of our lives. And that's okay.

What he's asking for, and what I want to give us more than anything, are as many of these nights as possible, filled with the craziness of our days on the fray and the friendship and love we feel for each other right in the center of it all. It will take work, as anything worth having does, but it's work I've always wanted to do...and work I want to share with him.

We didn't do anything spectacular tonight -- we simply cemented what already feels solid and whole: our family. Tomorrow will be another day much like this one, packed with work and school and the familiar juggling act we'll never quite perfect no matter how hard we try.

But it's our life, and I can't think of anything worth having more than that.

~ Katie