Engaged, With Nary a Resource...

This past Valentine's weekend, I told Michael to keep his schedule clear, and that I was going to take him on a trip.

I stole him away to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, where I used to live before I moved to Washington. We snowshoed in the morning, warmed up with some lunch, then headed up to the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival grounds to snowshoe on their nature trails and woods.

Jacob's Pillow is the oldest continuous dance festival in the U.S., a huge 10-week international explosion of the best in dance, and where I spent several years as an intern, seasonal staff member, and full-time staffer. The work there is of the highest quality, and the people that work and visit there among the finest I have met anywhere. It's an old farm that was converted to a dance retreat in the 1930's. The original farm house dates from the 1790's, and many of the other buildings were built by the dancers themselves between rehearsals.

I brought Michael to the Inside/Out stage, an outdoor amphitheater where we used to look at the stars on clear nights. We clomped up the steps in our snowshoes, and looked out over the rolling hills. There was a gentle snowfall, and under the clear gray light of the afternoon, I started my loosely prepared speech. About six words in, I broke down crying, and had to take a minute to compose myself. My winter cap felt too tight. I couldn't see Michael clearly through the tears and tried, unsuccessfully, to blink them away. I wanted to rush to the end, but made myself breathe and asked him to marry me. He said yes.

I had deliberated for some time beforehand about what to give him when I proposed. An engagement ring isn't apropriate...men don't wear them. But, I wanted to give him something to commemorate the moment, and so he knew I had given the decision the appropriate heft and contemplation. So, I elicited the help of some close friends and family, scoured the internet, and talked to other gay couples, all to no avail. There is not one resource about gay marriage that addresses the emotional and spiritual needs of the couple getting married! There's plently of Q&As about the legality of said marraiges (in short, iffy), diatribes against said marriages, and lots of news articles rehashing the same information over and over. But, no one has recognized that gay weddings are going to keep happening, so we had better come up with some infrastructure to deal with them.

However, the good news about not having any resources was that I had to look to our own relationship, and the traditions that we've created, for inspiration. The first time we met, as we were leaving each other's company, and without knowing when we would see each other again, I gave him a small compass from my car. I wanted to give him something so he would know that I was serious and so that he would remember me. It was the only thing I could find, so I handed it to him saying that he could use it to find his way back to me.

So, as an engagement gift, I had a pocket compass engraved for him that reads, "May we always find our way together." He said later that the proposal was just what he expected, except the compass. That one surprised him.

Now, we find ourselves muddling through the idea of having a wedding that seems quite traditional to us, but even to some family and friends is a difficult idea to understand. There are some questions that people have right off the bat that temper the joy that we expected to hear when telling people. It's understandable, I guess, and we are trying to be very understanding in answering people's questions and helping them to be comfortable with the idea of 'us'.