"That's a really long plant!" Trevor shouted to me across the courtyard of our respective jobs one really sunny afternoon in late June. He came over and started talking to me about the plant I was repotting for the salon before we left for our summer vacation week. He had on full Carhart overalls and probably a too small beanie and I was just like, Okay Dude. Well, he IS an okay dude so we became friends and hung out on some beach excursions and met up at some shows. He really sort of came into my life at a very low point where I was a little lost and a lot emotionally spent. He made that late summer much better than I anticipated it could be and in a very short time his charm, care, and handsome face just got me. He has come to countless shows, events and weird excursions with me these couple of years - always indulging me and down for the ride. He's a true partner, helps alleviate the stress of my overworked and high-strung state of being, is sweet and thoughtful and kind-hearted. He's the type of man who will fix the thing I've been saying I need to get to while I'm at work just to take it off my plate. He's the kind of man who bought me 3 kinds of sour cream chips because he didn't know what one I'd like more and wanted me to be happy. So I took the biggest leap of faith on vacation last July. My plans for the proposal a day before fell through due to flight delays and the unpredictability of travel, so I kept the rings on me for when I saw the moment come... I asked him to marry me in another courtyard in the back of a bar in New Orleans where our bartender happened to have lived in Providence. That's it - that was the moment. I don't quite believe in coincidence, so it was the heavy air and string lights and cobblestones behind Toulouse St. that became our story. I am so glad I didn't just brush off the "weird oogle" in the courtyard. _____________________________________________________________________________ Danielle and I met with nothing between us but a courtyard and a beautiful, trailing pothos. My intrepid sense of metaphor, always on delay, didn’t see “stunning woman nurtures icon of pity.” Only in writing this did I find that pathos and pothos are not the same word. Here I am thinking I’m being clever: Some call pothos “Devil’s Ivy.” What I did see was a person watering a plant on a very, very hot summer’s day. The routine of it was sweet. She wasn’t interested in me, and we were both interested in the beautiful, trailing pothos. Socially stunted and creeping my way out of the 2020 mindset, I asked if I might touch that plant. The normal tangent of strangers’ lives, I thought. We share acts of kindness and move on. Except, I was wrong: She reached out to me. Invited me to the beach. Made a connection with me and got to know who I am. Soon, our time together is not so incidental. We become proactive, and the framework of a shared life is arranged. Knowing now what it is I know about Danielle, every day reinforces the foundation of that fondness we have for one another. If in one year she can pull focus from “not interested” in the courtyard to “proposing in New Orleans…” either I’m doing something right, she knows what she wants, or both.