A Year And A Day

Oh I'm sorry, did everyone think we packed up our marbles and went home?

Nope. Time has elapsed at a puzzling rate, and anyway we've mostly been too busy to write. There have been exciting developments: I stopped being scared! (That the Trifecta would end with either a bang or a whimper, that is. I'm still scared of big hairy spiders.) But seriously, dispensing with fear has been a big relief for me.

In fact it allowed me to take us all one little step further into the future we dream of.

Early last month, Chloe and Red and I were enjoying our longest-ever stretch in our Desert Getaway spot. FOUR nights and days in which to sweat away the botherments of the city! Three visits to our favorite bar! And in the end, two rings.

The epic-ness of our trip became clear at the very beginning: we arrived in town just after the departure of a huge, freakish summer storm. It had dumped inches of water in the course of an hour, and littered the streets with gigantic palm branches. Our hotel's elevators and fitness center were flooded. ("Damn," said Chloe to the desk clerk who wore the cleverest bolo tie I've ever seen. "For the first time, we actually brought our workout clothes!" He could see we were both relieved.)

I had spent most of a week nervously shopping for jewelry for each of us, which I've done before. I got us all sorta-matching trinity knot items our first Christmas (a necklace for her, earrings for me, a keychain for him). For our first anniversary, triple-birthstone rings for all of us. Red's ring fell apart though, so then I got trinity bands for him and Chloe (that way them two had a pair of matching rings, and Chloe and I had a pair of matching rings, and Red and I already had our wedding rings from five years earlier). I kind of liked that asymmetry: the three different sets of two rings really reflected, I thought, the fact that there isn't just one relationship that each of us experiences identically. Now we had just passed our SECOND anniversary (who knew! actually possible!), and I was ready to take things to another level. Especially since the silver trinkets were starting to look worn out.

But there were two problems. One, the sweet little handfasting ceremony I had in mind, for us to promise things to each other? Got scooped by the people on Showtime's "Polyamory: Married and Dating". CURSE THEM. I will let others speak about just how much those people are Not Like Us (keywords: open vs. closed), but let it be said that I did not want to evoke THAT in my escalation.

The second problem still baffles me. How can Chloe and I be so bonded, so close, so intimately interwined with each other body and soul ... and yet I still have *no* idea what jewelry she would like?! For days I moped around jewelry shops and online sites, wretchedly failing to identify anything that I thought would please us both. Then I gave up and just tried to find rings I thought Chloe would like, and eventually I just concluded I should let go of the idea of surprise: let her pick a ring her own self. Red, I wasn't sure if he'd even want a ring, considering how I was going to play this.

So I plotted for an opportune moment. Should I take us all to a place we've never been, one of the rugged and lovely outdoor locales the area is famous for? The 103-degree heat was a deterrent. Perhaps an old favorite haunt? More romantic in the dark? But the public places seemed too ... public. In the end, I settled on "by the pool, first thing of the last morning". It was quiet, pretty, and we had reached relaxation-equilibrium. I stated my case, and each of them seemed sweetly charmed.

It goes like this: long ago in pre-Christian Ireland and Scotland, there was a variety of types of marriage one could enter into. (If you're a scholar of this already, just grant me some license here -- I realize my description is cartoonish, but the medieval-European-history-minor in me is slave to the hopeless romantic in me.) One of the "contracts" was intended to last for a year and a day; at the end of that time, the spouses could choose to commit more permanently, or go their ways freely. I proposed to Red and Chloe this: since I love you both beyond words, and since it's not realistic to make a marriage-style commitment before we have a plausible plan for moving in together, and that goal is at least six to twelve months away; how about we promise each other that we will stay together -- come hell or high water, sorrow, joy, other flirtations, angry moments, weariness, doubts or worries -- for a year and a day. How about that? Chloe said "Yes." Red said, "That's a no-brainer". I said "Let's go jewelry shopping!"

So the last thing we did before leaving Beloved Desert Getaway was to pick out two completely different rings: I could not have even approached guessing right about what Chloe would want, and was tickled with what she did choose. Mine is completely different, and I love it. Red preferred not to have another ring, neither to increase his total nor to replace one of his existing ones. (A couple of weeks later we got him some new hiking boots, approximately equal in value to each of our rings. This struck me as perfect.)

Of course, I should have known they'd both say yes. Just a week before, Red put a $6 bet on a Trifecta at the biggest race of the year, having asked me and Chloe what horses we liked. We won! We won big! We're still winning. We've won love.