engagement

My brother got engaged this past week. That’s the message he left on my cell phone: “I got engaged last night,” in a stunned voice, as though it were something that just happened rather than an event for which he’s been preparing for several months. I don’t fault him for this; despite my poor feelings about weddings (which I will write about here at some point), engagements are, it seems to me, those kinds of moments that, whether or not you remember them, set up a course for your life. You know that in the future you’ll look back on that moment, maybe not because of what happened that day, but what it enabled to happen later.

P and I got engaged on October 16, 1998. It was, I believe, a Friday, but beyond that I’m not sure why I remember that date. The night we got engaged we went to a restaurant that was a bit out of our league, or at least we both thought so at the time.

We sat at one of the many tables for two sandwiched about a foot and a half apart along a bench that ran almost the length of the restaurant. Perhaps the couple next to us was drunk. Why else would they, knowing that we were a mere 18 inches from them, have denigrated our choice of bread loud enough for us to hear? (“Can you believe they ordered the dill rather than the rosemary?”) Another overheard whisper from this couple, as he clasped her hands on the table and looked into her eyes: “I love that we come here all the time.”

We belong. You do not.

I used to get angry thinking about that memory, but now I realize that memory is one way that night has stayed with me. What better way to recall the camaraderie that P and I shared over being amused by these folks? It is that moment that allows me to remember that night, not some awestruck memory of the Staten Island Ferry where P produced the ring 90 minutes before.