text: John didn't want to propose until after the baby came. It was a conversation we must have had a dozen or more times in the lead up to those most momentous events of his life to that point. "It'll look like I'm only marrying her because she's pregnant," he would say. "Well ... Aren't you?" I would ask. And John would laugh a bit or grimace a bit or get a little angry or look a little introspective. I guess it depended on his mood. Little Angelina was born two weeks premature on Valentine's day. They both took it as a sign, but of course it wasn't. There are no signs except the ones we imagine after the fact. But that's beside the point. The wedding was in mid May and the reception was at a small building in the country that I think used to be a Ukrainian community center but was now just an empty hall that got rented out about once a month to people who couldn't afford anything better. A long hall, low ceiling, faint yellow staining on the ceiling tiles from when they used to allow smoking indoors, and a vague smell that everyone recognized but no one could quite place. It was a liminal place, and I hold in the deep recesses of my mind a flash of half a memory of my parents dragging me along to some other almost identical hall for a church supper when I was a kid. But I'm getting sidetracked. Anyway ... The ceremony didn't have a priest or any sort of religious minister, just John's older brother who had been ordained online. It was his first time marrying anyone and he looked as nervous as the bride and groom. I'm almost sure I remember seeing him throwing up in the dumpster out back before the ceremony began. It wasn't a beautiful wedding or a particularly big wedding or a really special wedding when it comes down to it, and in the years that would follow I'm ashamed to say that my memories of it likely got mixed and jumbled together with many other similar weddings in similar places with similar groups of people. But in the moment, it was a lot of fun. John got as drunk as I've ever seen him and swore up and down that he'd love Laureline forever. And she'd love him right back. That's what she said, anyway. Three years and two kids later they divorced. I never got the full story. I don't think anyone cheated. I think they just weren't right for each other. Or else that they were both just too tired to keep trying to be right for each other. When Karen and I talk about marriage, as we do frighteningly often anymore, I act like it's a foregone conclusion that it'll happen. I act like I'm excited at the prospect. I act like a proposal is just around the corner. But I don't want us to be another John and Laureline and, truthfully, I'm not sure we won't be. See, everyone feels like what they have is indestructible, like their love can't be broken or changed, but it can be. Loving has to be an effort and that effort wears you out. And maybe you won't always be in love. Maybe you won't always want to be in love. But you'll say, "let's do it. Let's spend the rest of our lives together." Only you don't know how long that really is. And you can't know until you try it. And maybe it's worth all that effort, after all, John and Laureline both still love their kids a whole lot and their kids wouldn't exist without them having ended up together. But maybe it's not worth much of anything. Maybe it's all just a waste of time. For my part, I'm sure eventually I'll break down and give her the ring I bought last June. But what's the rush? Next week is as good a time as any, and so is the one after. We're both happy now. Why can't that just continue? I guess it's because people fear change, but they need it. They need to be able to divide their lives into sections. The time before and the time during and the time after. So we'll get engaged, and we'll get married, and maybe someday we'll get divorced. And our lives will be neatly chopped up into those perfectly arranged little chapters just like we need them to be. All little distinct and finite sections leading to one that goes on forever, identical to the one before all the others. And then we'll finally be at peace. And we won't need love and we won't need change and we won't need cheap weddings and drunken confessions of undying commitment. And we won't need divisions into sections and subsections. But for now, this ring is sitting heavy in my pocket and I can see the Mariachi band approaching our table behind Karen's head. She doesn't suspect a thing. Or, if she does, she's doing me a solid by playing along so we'll have a nicer story to tell later on. I drop to one knee.