text: A lonely young man and discouraged young woman make a pact in high school. If they are both single at thirty they say, they will get married. Several years go by, she gets engaged but breaks off the relationship. He does not find love, so the day of his thirtieth birthday he calls the woman and asks if she is seeing anyone. She laughs and says No. Me neither. You know that was a joke right? she says. He responds with an affirmation, adding they should try again when they are forty for they are still young and much of their lives is yet to be lived. Shortly after this conversation the woman is introduced to her roommates brother. They hit it off and are married. They have kids, careers, buy mid-sized cars and a house in the suburbs they can not afford. She works as a receptionist at his practice. One Saturday she lets herself to find him inside a partner. Papers are filled soon after. Property is split. Visitations figured. Now the kids have two Christmases. In a month she will turn forty. The young man strings together one relationship after another. He uses dating apps, work connections, friend’s sisters. They all bring sex without intimacy. His partners are for the most part willing and present. The fear is his. He cannot commit because if it. He does nothing to address the fear. Therefore on his fortieth birthday he calls the woman and asks if she is still single. She is but not is not a good time, she says. She talks about her divorce, about her pain and her need to be single for a little while so she can figure out who she really is. Why don’t you call me when we’re fifty? He laughs through the phone. Immediately the man dialogs with his inner voice. He confronts himself in the mirror, seeing a lot of middle age and not a lot else. He is inspired to get help. He finds a therapist he likes, a young asian woman with a doctoral degree from Columbia. She is expensive but their work pays off. The man address head on the issues of his life. He opens up about his absent father and overbearing mother. He learns to trust, others and himself. He begins a spiritual practice of twenty minutes of silent mediation morning and evening. He encounters his true self, the eternal place within. Living from a more authentic center he begins to flower. He opens himself to more intimate relationships. When vacationing with his girlfriend in Italy, he cries as she holds him. They are married on the plane ride back by a minister who happened to be sitting next to them. A stewardess served as maid of honor, one of the pilots was best man. The people traveling first class sit and wonder what’s with all the commotion happening in coach. On the ride home from the airport, their cab is sideswiped by a drunk driver. Both the driver and girlfriend are killed. Waking up in the hospital the man learns of wife. Only death consoles him. He wants to be reunited with his love. He wants to relive their Italian romance. He wants to unplug himself from the machines keeping him alive. On his fiftieth birthday he calls no one and no one calls him. The same thing happens the years of his sixtieth and seventieth birthdays. However at age eighty three there is knock at his door. Standing in his porch is the woman. She’s remarried but her husband has recently passed. I lost the one I wanted to keep, yet the one I don’t want is still around she says. They pass the time as friends, talking about their lives, their pains and triumphs and the lonely desperation of youth. They confess their ill-fated affection of one another. We didn’t get it right this time says the eighty-three year old man, adding do you think we will get another shot? I suspect not. I suspect the same. Would you like to hold hands and walk to the park? I would like that very much. The people of the park remark to themselves the loveliness of the cute couple in love at their twilight and they pray they might be so lucky.