"I love everyone in the world" (The wonderful heart of a child)

We were all sitting around my parents' dining table - me, EB, [redacted], my mom, my dad, my brother, and my aunt - and were digging into a delicious steak dinner when little [redacted] piped up to point out that "We forgot to say a blessing!"

When asked if she would like to do the honors, [redacted] began, "Dear God, thank you for Jeffy, and Mommy, and..." and she proceeded to give thanks for each person sitting around the table, and also for the food we were eating, but it was something else she said in the midst of giving thanks that really stood out.

"I love everyone in the world."

The more I have gotten to know [redacted], the more amazed and inspired I am by what a big heart resides inside that precious four-and-a-half-year-old girl.

When [redacted] meets someone new, she is usually very shy at first. But it doesn't take long for that shyness to pass. And when a new person comes into her life and treats her with love, she returns that love many times over. She makes sure that person knows how loved they are. She'll spontaneously launch herself at friends or family members to give them ferociously intense hugs. (Recently she did this while I wasn't looking and knocked me onto my back from my seated position on the floor!) EB is the most frequent target of [redacted]'s affections (I adore [redacted]'s random proclamations of "I love you, Mama!") but [redacted] is always sure to spread the love around. When we were leaving my parents' house after our Labor Day weekend visit, [redacted] gave each person there a drawing she had made that weekend. On the back of mine, she wrote my name and her name and drew several hearts around them. This has become a common practice for her and it's so incredibly sweet.

[redacted]'s caring spirit is not limited to people she knows. One of the most amazing things that happened over the weekend came in the bounce house that had been rented for the annual block party on the street where I grew up. [redacted] spent a lot of time jumping around in the bounce house and it was a joy for me to see her joy. My favorite part, though, was her interaction with a younger boy who ventured into the bounce house that was mostly occupied by larger (5-8-ish) children. Some of the play was pretty wild, and some tears were shed after collisions, although no serious injuries occurred. Realizing that the risk was greatest for the smallest child there, [redacted] immediately took it upon herself to watch after the little boy. She gave him gentle guidance to be careful in the bounce house. She kept an eye on him when he was in there. She helped him up when he fell. After one fall (not a serious one), she reached out to him and with love and concern in her voice said the sweetest, most adorable thing: "Are you all right, little fella?"

Although the number of people in the world is far too large for [redacted] to grasp, I fully believe her when she says that she loves everyone in the world. Love comes easily to young children. It's much more natural than hate. [redacted], though, stands out with her huge capacity for caring and love and affection. One thing that I have been so struck by in my time with [redacted] is the amazing sponge-like quality of young children's minds and the way they take in everything they see and experience and reflect that back into the world. [redacted]'s bigheartedness is a tremendous affirmation of what a wonderful person EB is, for EB has been by far the largest influence on [redacted], and [redacted] would not have such a loving nature if she had not had a great example to follow.

We should all consider this when we spend time with children. It breaks my heart to think of the children who are growing up in households where a person who mocks the disabled, brags about grabbing women by the pussy, and dehumanizes immigrants (to name just a few items from a depressingly long list) is considered someone to be admired. Love comes more naturally to children than hate, but if they are inundated with demonstrations of hate, that's going to be hard to overcome. As much as we can, we need to demonstrate love and compassion to all the children we meet, whether they are our own or strangers. Every significant interaction with a child is a powerful opportunity to help shape what sort of person that child becomes.

This is, by an even wider margin, the least likely thing that has ever happened

Over the years - especially the last few - I've enjoyed cataloging the various strange and unlikely coincidences that have happened to me in my life. The list of these coincidences has grown at an accelerating rate in the time since Cara's diagnosis and death, sometimes even making me tempted to question the nature of reality. Bizarre coincidences that have happened to Cara and me - ranging from Cara correctly predicting her bib number (666) at a cycling tour to me randomly hearing the minor '90s alt-rock hit "Here's Where the Story Ends" on two separate occasions on the day of Cara's calling hours - were the theme of the blog post This is, by a wide margin, the least likely thing that has ever happened that I wrote last year in February. I later described several other remarkable coincidences, all of them related to the timing of significant concerts, in my November 4 blog post.

The latter post was both an account of my first date with Cara and a review of the first show of the first, and last, Temple of the Dog tour that I attended on the tenth anniversary of that first date. I say "and last" because yesterday brought the news that Temple of the Dog's lead singer Chris Cornell, best known for his band Soundgarden, committed suicide the previous night, after a Soundgarden show in Detroit, at the age of 52. I was shocked and deeply saddened at the news, perhaps more so than by any other celebrity death in my lifetime. Cornell was an amazing talent and his music really meant a lot to me. It's so sad when someone with so much to offer the world feels that he no longer wants to be a part of the world and acts on those feelings. I've certainly experienced depression myself, but never suicidal impulses. There's so much about the workings of the human brain that remains such a mystery. But help is out there. When you're depressed, it often makes it harder to seek out that help. That's one of the awful things about depression. I'm not judging Cornell, because I have no idea what he was going through, but I wish deeply that he could have found the help he needed to get out of that dark place, just as I wish that for everyone dealing with similar feelings. Don't give up on getting better. Do everything you can to find that help. It's worth the effort.

(Speaking of the mysterious workings of the human brain, last night I had a dream in which I was going to a therapy session, and in my dream Chris Cornell was my therapist, and I realized he wouldn't be there because he had died. That's one to ponder for a while.)

In happier news...

Something truly amazing has happened to me. Along with it have come several more astonishingly unlikely coincidences, and since I so enjoy doing so, I decided to write about them.

On March 2 I was sitting at my desk at work when a message popped up on Facebook Messenger from someone I did not know. "Hi, I'm EB," read the message. "How long have you been part of the "Young, Widowed and Dating" group? I've just joined the group. I lost my husband Todd to brain cancer in 2014."

(It should be noted, amusingly in retrospect, that the full title of the Facebook group is "SUPPORT GROUP: Young, Widowed & Dating - Not Dating Site" - that is, the purpose of the group is explicitly not for members to solicit dates with other members.)

I enjoy meeting new people, so I responded to EB's message, and we had a very nice chat. Soon, our chats became a regular thing. We became fast friends. As the weeks went by, I began to realize that meeting EB, it just kinda reminded me of, well, meeting Cara. Yet EB lives in Nashville, and I was already dating someone in Cleveland who I liked, so I wasn't intent on pursuing a relationship with EB. It was nice to have someone to discuss the whole "young, widowed, and dating" thing with, though - someone else who really "got it." We both enjoyed sharing some of our dating adventures with each other. We also both enjoyed reading each other's blogs. These glimpses into the inner workings of each other's hearts and minds definitely helped draw us to each other.

Early in April, the woman I was dating and I had a discussion about our future and basically both agreed that, although we really liked each other and enjoyed spending time together, it probably wasn't going to become a serious long-term relationship. We are still friends, for which I'm grateful. It's actually pretty wild to me that, because I had never dated anyone before Cara, this is the first time ever that I've been dating someone for a while, and then ceased to be romantically involved with her, but she's still alive. So I'm definitely glad to still be friends!

Already, even before this conversation, I had been starting to wonder if EB was a better match, but I was reluctant to give up a pretty good thing here in Cleveland for a maybe in Nashville. Now I felt no such reservations - and I had suspected since very early in our friendship that EB might be interested in me - so I went ahead and asked her out. And obviously, as I wouldn't be writing this post otherwise, she said yes! We made plans for me to visit Nashville on the last weekend of April. And it was then that the coincidences began to pile up once more, in shocking fashion.

Shortly after we agreed to try being "more than friends" I was "Facebook stalking" EB and I noticed that she was friends with someone with whom I had three mutual friends - EB, and two other people. Intrigued by this, I looked at this friend's profile. The two other mutual friends were both involved in Cara's lung cancer charity event Breathe Deep Cleveland. I quickly realized that this person who was somehow friends with EB was the niece of one of the lead local organizers of the event and had come from Nashville to the event and led a Zumba warmup before the walk/run. I decided I had to ask EB how she knew her. Imagine my surprise when, on the same day, EB said that she had an amazing story for me!

EB has a four-year-old daughter named [redacted]. [redacted] has a nanny. EB was talking to her nanny about me, and when the nanny asked to see a picture of me, EB showed her this picture:

"Is... is he wearing an Afternoon Naps shirt?" [redacted]'s nanny asked.

Afternoon Naps were a local Cleveland band that Cara and I loved. We became friends with the two lead members of the band, Tom and Leia, who even attended our wedding. It turned out that [redacted]'s nanny used to live in Cleveland - and had dated Tom - and had helped design the t-shirt I'm wearing in that picture. Oh, and that picture was taken when Cara and I were in Pittsburgh for a Belle and Sebastian concert at which we saw some of our friends including Tom and Leia - and [redacted]'s nanny was also at that concert.

I was completely flabbergasted at this story. And then I asked EB how she knew the other friend of hers with whom I had a personal connection, the one I had discovered.

EB started laughing.

That other friend? [redacted]'s preschool teacher.

So despite the two of us never having lived anywhere near each other, we share not just one, but two astonishingly unlikely personal connections. And we had each, independently, discovered one of the two connections, and had simultaneously been looking forward to sharing them with each other! We have both spent a lot of time just marveling over these connections and at how our lives came to intersect.

Those weren't the only weird coincidences that happened in April.

At one point in one of our conversations EB asked me what my middle name was. "Michael," I replied, to her surprise, for Michael was also her late husband Todd's middle name. I reasoned with her that this wasn't that strange because Michael is an extremely common name. Then I found out that [redacted]'s middle name is [redacted], given to her because it's EB's mother-in-law's middle name. It's also my mother-in-law's middle name. So okay, those two middle name coincidences taken together? Pretty strange.

Another astonishing coincidence happened in the middle of the month when I received a sympathy card from the vet's office for the recent death of Cara's cat Mitters. When I opened the card, I realized that the text on the inside was very familiar. It was the same text on the cards that were handed out at Cara's funeral. I immediately had to go and find one of those cards. I placed them side by side, verifying that the words were identical.

Then I flipped to the fronts of the cards, and it hit me.

Not only did both cards have identical words, they also both had double rainbows - not just rainbows, but double rainbows - on the front. At this realization, I just broke down laughing. I just laughed and laughed for several minutes. It was all just too much.

A little more than a week later, I was in Columbus and went to visit my mother-in-law Joyce. I told her all about the exciting developments in my life. For by this point in time, although I had still not yet met EB in person, the two of us had grown very, very close, adding near nightly Skype sessions to our communications (something, I might add, that considerably reduced the potential awkwardness of meeting for the first time in person - hooray for technology!). We were both extremely excited for my trip to Nashville and impatient for it to arrive. I also told Joyce about all the recent weird coincidences. The personal connections EB and I discovered. The middle names. The cards for Mitters and Cara (which I brought to show Joyce in person). "Hey, you up there, are you trying to tell me something?" she said, perhaps only partly in jest, looking up at the sky.

Upon telling Joyce that I would be going to Nashville the following weekend, she said that she would be worried, just as she had worried about Cara going to Cleveland. "It's like that Megafaun song, 'Worried Mind'," she said, referencing a song by a band Cara and I liked. (Joyce has an old iPod that we filled with music for her to enjoy.) She went on to sing a snippet of the song.

And here was one of the very strangest coincidences of all the strange coincidences I've experienced. For out of all the more than 10,000 songs that are on my iPod, the one that I was in the middle of listening to when I arrived at my in-laws' place? It was "Worried Mind." (And no, there's no way Joyce could have heard it playing, because when I pulled up she was inside with the door closed, and the windows of my car were rolled up.)

Driving away afterwards, listening to the rest of the song from where I had left off when I parked, I broke down laughing again.

As I remarked to EB later, sometimes it feels like the whole universe is some weird practical joke being played on me.

But wait, there's more!

April 29 brought my trip to Nashville. The date of the trip has an odd significance. It's not completely coincidental, because I noticed it ahead of time and sort of did it on purpose (which is perhaps weird), but objectively speaking, that weekend did make the most sense for my trip, and the fact that the opportunity even presented itself for things to work out this way is rather wild. Anyway, April 29, 2017 was two years and five days from the day Cara died. And EB was born two years and five days after Cara was born. Therefore, when I met EB in person, she was exactly the same age, to the day, as Cara was when Cara was last alive.

Pretty strange, but I'd like to think of it as a good sign.

The trip went amazingly well, as did EB's first visit to Cleveland two weeks later. Finding true love again after having had it and lost it is... really something. It's hard to put into words. It's probably hard to understand if you haven't experienced it yourself. And I feel like it would be nigh impossible to form a connection of such depth with someone who hasn't experienced the things I have. I feel very lucky right now.

There was one more funny coincidence in Nashville. On my last day there, EB suggested we pick up [redacted] early from preschool and go have ice cream before I departed. She said there was a really good ice cream place called Jeni's. "Is that the Jeni's that's originally from Columbus, Ohio?" I asked.

"... Oh yeah... it is," EB said, a little embarrassed that she had forgotten, for she knew that I had grown up in Columbus, and she said that the main thing she knew about Columbus was that Jeni's was from there.

It was a real trip to walk into the familiar setting of a Jeni's shop while in a city that was completely new to me. And there in the Jeni's in Nashville I was served ice cream by a woman with a tattoo of the state of Ohio on her forearm. I asked her about it and she explained that she was from Ohio. The tattoo was notable because Cara too had a tattoo of Ohio on her forearm.

In fact, I had just shown a picture of that tattoo to EB earlier that day while telling her the story of my own tattoo, which was done by the same tattoo artist as Cara's Ohio tattoo. Jeni's ice cream was something Cara and I enjoyed many times together, including, most notably, after our wedding, while still decked out in our wedding attire. I'd like to think of that encounter with a woman with an Ohio tattoo in that Nashville Jeni's as a little sign from Cara.

I also love that I can share all these stories with EB without feeling the least bit awkward. Cara and Todd are very much a part of our relationship, and it's a very good thing.

April 2017 was probably, all told, the most amazing month of my life. Life is really weird. Right now, it's really weird in a good way.

This is the last time. Are you sad?

Last summer, I started a series of posts about the online word game Psychobabble in which Cara and I met, and that, as our friendship grew, we increasingly used to flirt with each other via sentences we made in the game.

First Psychobbable post (Note: this post includes an explanation of how the game worked. Since it's been so long since my previous post on the topic, it's probably worth including a very brief refresher here. The game was based on magnetic fridge poetry, and in each round, players in a room of up to twelve had one minute to pick some words from a set of around 60-70 tiles and arrange them into a sentence. Then all the sentences were displayed and players voted for their favorites.)

Second Psychobabble post

I intended it to be a three-part series, and now I'm finally getting around to writing the third part, which covers July and August 2006 including the first trip we ever took together, an event that was shortly followed by the end of the game Psychobabble. As before, I'll be posting screenshots of sentences, sometimes with corresponding in-game chat, along with my explanations of the sentences. And as I said in the previous post, "I will remind everyone again that she and I never collaborated on sentence making; every single time that we made sentences that went with each other it was a case of us being on the same mental wavelength by thinking of the same inside jokes or, in certain cases, by some bizarre coincidence."

Now, back to the sentences.

July 9

As shown in my previous post, we really liked to make sentences about going on walks together.

July 10

"Fishing" - as in fishing for compliments from each other - was something we often accused each other of, and made jokes about, in our online chats.

July 11

Cara and I decided that we were going to travel together to Washington, D.C. in early August to see a show by our favorite band, Ozma. This sentence by Cara celebrates our decision to go!

July 13

Cara's sentence was foreshadowing of numerous future walks on which we would hold each other's hands. My sentence is a reference to the fact that I had recently sent her a short video clip of me playing the piano (specifically, a snippet of the Ozma song "Gameover").

July 23

Here we both made sentences referencing the fact that Cara worked at a company called Garden City Group.

Our two sentences both referencing the Ozma song "You Know the Story" go together nicely.

July 29

Cara's sentence is about the fact that she liked a lot of the music I listened to. My sentence teasingly insinuates that Cara liked music we considered bad such as "In the End" by Linkin Park and "My Immortal" by Evanescence.

August 1

My sentence here kind of amazes me. As I talked about in my previous blog posts about Psychobabble, it's one that could plausibly be "just a sentence," but I have no doubt that in my mind when I made it was the fact that I had never been on a real date (something I had not directly told Cara!) and that if Cara and I went out on a date she would therefore be "my first date." Which did, of course, happen, but not until a little over three months after I made this sentence!

August 2

And here's one from Cara that could be "just a sentence" but was undoubtedly actually about her hopes that I did in fact "like her" (as more than a friend).

This was shortly before our trip to D.C. My sentence is obviously about the fact we were going to a show there. Although we were going primarily so that we could see Ozma, they were actually not headlining the show but rather opening for The Rentals (another band we liked), so that's what Cara's sentence is about.

"Speedy speed boy" is something Cara had called me in reference to my being a runner.

August 4

After we returned from D.C., we learned the dismaying news that Popcap, the company that ran Psychobabble, had announced they would soon be shutting the game down. My sentence is about this, with a classic Garden Fight reference. I should also mention that of the two people who voted for my sentence, one was (of course) Cara, and the other was... Cara's mother! But I didn't know that at the time. Actually, a while before Cara had told me that her mother played Psychobabble, but I thought Cara was joking, and when it became clear I thought she was joking, Cara decided to play it off as if she had been joking rather than continue to try to convince me. It wasn't until years later that I learned the truth.

Just days before we went to D.C., I broke my arm after falling down while running, which meant that Cara had to do all the driving on the trip. Here's Cara with a rather cruel (and hilarious!) sentence about my injury.

Another sentence by Cara about her hopes that I was into her.

A great sentence by Cara about the imminent demise of our favorite pastime.

August 7

While on our trip, we saw a sign for "Forks of Cheat," a winery in Morgantown, West Virginia. We thought this name was very funny. I love Cara's sentence referencing it.

Cara's sentence is about the fact that we had slept in the same hotel room in D.C. (but in different beds!).

August 8

In retrospect, my sentence is kind of cruel considering how apparent it was Cara had a crush on me and how uncertain she was of whether I felt the same way about her! Good thing it ended up not being Cara's imagination! Her sentence is a reference to the bowling outing that was the first time we got together in person.

One of the highlights of the trip was the fact that in the car, I read aloud to Cara Cretaceous Park, the sequel to Jurassic Park that my best childhood friend and I wrote in fifth grade. (In August 2015 I created an annotated version of Cretaceous Park and it can be found in this blog post.) This led to a lot of laughter on both our parts. The funniest thing to us was the absurd repetition of the phrase '"Run!" shouted Alan.'



Because I had a broken arm, it was hard for me to open a bottle of water. Cara's sentence is a great reference to this, evoking a scene of her watching me struggle with the bottle and waiting for me to ask for help (she did end up helping me open the bottle). My sentence comes from the fact that certain aspects of our trip were very poorly planned, mainly that we did not pick a dinner location ahead of time, assuming we'd come across something, and then (in those pre-smart-phone days) failing to do so after walking around the National Mall for a while and then taking the Metro to near the 9:30 Club, the concert venue. We were both very hungry, me especially. I ended up buying a bag of chips at a gas station across the street from the 9:30 Club. In the fall of 2015, on a trip in which I went to a concert at another venue in the same area, I discovered that there were actually numerous restaurants just blocks away from where we had been. Oops!

Cara's sentence is another reference to her helping me open my water bottle. My sentence is another reference to Cretaceous Park. 

August 9

Here's another Forks of Cheat reference.

While at my parents' house, I was looking at Cara's pictures from the trip on Flickr, and my mom saw that the name on the Flickr account was Communista, leading my mom to say, "Is... is this person a communist?" (Cara was not a communist.)

I really like this pair of sentences referencing the Ozma song title "Light Years Will Burn."

Aw, what a nice sentence by Cara.

Cara with another Rentals sentence. Me with another "is it flirting or is it just a sentence" sentence.

While I made a sentence about our D.C. trip and Cara made a sentence about hoping to go to another show with me, Jen (SA_shedevil) also made a sentence about Cara and me. She was someone who frequently played Psychobabble with us and who Cara had privately told about her feelings for me. I'm pretty sure I voted for "Your walks are really more than that" thinking that it was Cara's sentence and I don't remember what I thought of it when I saw it was actually Jen's sentence.

I feel like with the game soon ending, Cara was feeling desperate and was making more and more sentences hinting at her feelings for me. Although we did flirt some in our frequent AOL Instant Messenger chats, we were much more flirtatious in our Psychobabble sentences, because there was the plausible deniability factor of "maybe they're just sentences." The game going away would remove this outlet. It makes me wonder if things would have played out any differently, and perhaps sooner, had the game not gone away. My sentence, by the way, is about Cara driving the car on our trip while I controlled the music from the passenger seat.

Cara's sentence references the fact that we took the Green Line on the D.C. Metro. My sentence is a twisted reference, but one that Cara nonetheless got (and loved!), to a rest stop on the way to D.C. that overlooked the Youghiogheny River. (I combined the tiles "Yugo," "-ing," and "-ly" to make something that very vaguely resembled Youghiogheny.) This would be a good place to quote the first paragraph of Cara's wedding vows:

Even before we met, we finished each other's sentences. After we had actually met, I knew I wanted to get to know you better. And as we sat atop a hill overlooking the Youghiogheny River later that year, I knew that I was beginning to fall in love with you.

(Well, I have tears in my eyes now.)

August 10 - the last day of Psychobabble

Awwwww. Cara was going all out on the flirting.



My punny and topical sentence here was very popular.



These are my and Cara's final Psychobabble sentences ever, which we made in the same round. Very fitting.

Despite our incessant flirting in the game, it wasn't until almost three months later, November 4, that we finally revealed our feelings for each other and started dating. The long delay was partly due to the fact that after that trip to D.C., we did not see each other in person for over two months. This next in-person get together was for an Okkervil River concert in Columbus, after which I finally came to the full realization that I did want to give being more than friends with Cara a shot. And the time after that when we saw each other was that fateful November 4, Cara's first of many trips to see me in Cleveland.

Psychobabble was gone forever, but in the months and years to come there were multiple attempts at recreating it by fans of the original game. The best was called Pseudobabble, which we would enjoy playing many times over the years, all the way up to as recently as 2013. Sadly, Pseudobabble eventually died off, and to my knowledge there is no working Psychobabble-like game online today.

It really was amazing the way Cara and I hit it off after meeting through this game and then the way we used the game to create our own unique way of communicating with each other. What a fantastic love story...

November 4

I went to Philadelphia on Friday to see a very special concert by Temple of the Dog. The trip was a moving experience - for multiple reasons. The concert, that was something I expected to move me, and boy did it live up to those expectations. My visit the next day to Valley Forge National Historical Park? That took me by surprise.

But first, Temple of the Dog.

You might not recognize the name, but there's a good chance you've at least heard their hit song "Hunger Strike." In any case, some background is in order. Andrew Wood, lead singer of the band Mother Love Bone, died of a heroin overdose on March 19, 1990. Wood had been the roommate of Chris Cornell, lead singer of Soundgarden. Inspired by his good friend's death, Cornell started writing songs, then joined up with Wood's Mother Love Bone bandmates Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard, as well as guitarist Mike McCready (who had recently started collaborating with Ament and Gossard) and Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron and the project turned into a full-fledged album - Temple of the Dog. A little-known at the time vocalist named Eddie Vedder also came in to share lead vocals with Cornell on "Hunger Strike."

Soon, Vedder, Ament, Gossard, and McCready would become famous as four of the five members of Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden's popularity would also soar as the Seattle grunge scene took the early '90s music world by storm. And thus Temple of the Dog, a band that would otherwise have been mostly forgotten, started to get a lot of airplay.

I've been a big Pearl Jam fan for most of my life, and a fan of Soundgarden as well. When I got the Temple of the Dog album, I fell in love instantly. It's been one of my all-time favorite albums ever since. I never expected to see a live Temple of the Dog show - Temple had been a one-off project; they never even toured to support the album, playing just a few shows. So I was simultaneously shocked and exhilarated when it was announced earlier this year that, to mark the album's 25th anniversary, the first ever Temple of the Dog tour would be taking place.

I was even more shocked when I saw the date of the very first show on the tour: November 4, 2016.

You see, November 4, 2016 would be the 10-year anniversary of my dating Cara.

These things keep happening. Oddly significant timing of significant concerts. Cara and I planned our wedding on June 12, 2011 in Columbus, and then Okkervil River announced a tour with a show in Columbus on June 11, the night before the wedding (we went to the show, of course). Bowerbirds, the band whose song "Northern Lights" was the first dance song at our wedding, played a show in Cleveland on June 12, 2012 - and so we got to dance to a live performance of our first dance song on our first wedding anniversary. The last concert I ever went to while Cara was still alive (and although she had little more than a week to live, I had absolutely no idea of this at the time) was by Sufjan Stevens, and as I had so often done in the past when I was at shows without her, I called her so she could listen to a song she liked - and it was the last song of the concert - and that song was "Chicago," the recessional music at our wedding. The first time Cara's birthday, September 22, came around after her death, Godspeed You! Black Emperor - the band whose 2011 show in Chicago was easily one of the most powerful and memorable shows we ever attended together - had a show in Cleveland.

On November 4, 2006, Cara drove up from Columbus to Cleveland, the first of many such drives she'd make. I remember feeling simultaneously very excited and very nervous. There had been a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach intensifying since at least the day before. Having become amazingly close friends with Cara over the past seven-and-a-half months, and having suspected for a while that she had a crush on me, I'd finally come around to deciding that yes, I did want to try being more than friends with her. Having been an exceptionally shy person my whole life, I'd never told a girl something like this before. Hence the combination of excitement and nervousness. It was a sunny day, a bit chilly but not too cold, nice weather for a walk. Going for walks was something we'd done before, so it was natural that we'd go for a walk that afternoon after she arrived. We headed out from my apartment on East 115th Street near Case's North Residential Village, down Hessler Road and through the campus to the lagoon by the Cleveland Museum of Art. Early in the walk, Cara remarked that her hands were cold. I don't remember how I reacted. We walked around the lagoon, enjoying a nice conversation as we always did together. We made at least three loops of the lagoon. I was kind of stalling for time, to be honest. Trying to muster up the nerve to say something about the feelings I had developed for Cara. I was almost completely certain those feelings were mutual - but what if I was wrong? I'd never done anything like this before!

By the lagoon, Cara took this picture of me. (I borrowed her scarf for the picture.) I don't have any pictures of her from that day. Back then, she didn't like having her picture taken.

Another snippet of conversation that I recall from by the lagoon: Cara said something about how all the guys who liked her were weird or creepy. "All the guys?" I said, trying to hint at but not actually saying "what about me?"

After several times around the lagoon and me still not overcoming my fears, we headed back in the direction of my apartment, but did not go directly there; instead, I suggested we go see the new dorms and stadium. While walking up Bellflower I asked Cara if her hands were still cold. She said yes. We reached the stadium and paused "beneath a great brick arch" (as Cara put it in the storybook she made me for Valentine's Day three months later). This was the view from where we stood (well, almost; the building in the background between the scoreboard and bleachers wasn't there at the time):

Standing there next to each other, I said to Cara (paraphrasing of course; this was ten years ago), "Well, I was going to say if your hands are cold, maybe it would help if we held hands?"

(Aaaah! So corny! So awkward! And yet, so right for that moment and for our friendship/romance! The next day on AIM chat after Cara had returned home, I said, "The way you reacted when I asked if we should hold hands was so adorable" and Cara replied, "Teehee. I don't even remember what I said. Everything went fuzzy then.")

So we did hold hands as we walked around the stadium and back to my apartment. I recall we both had a fresh spring in our steps for that last portion of the walk. It was really a magical feeling. And for the whole rest of her visit that day, we were both finally able to open up about so many things we had both been keeping secret.

Upon returning to my apartment, if my memory serves me correctly, we sat together at my kitchen table and played a game of Scrabble (we had occasionally been playing online Scrabble with each other so it seemed like a natural thing to do).

Actually, my memory is rather hazy on that. I do remember playing Scrabble, but had thought it was before the walk. What I don't have to rely on my memory for, though, is what music we listened to that day and when we listened to it. That's thanks to the listening history in my last.fm profile.

You might be wondering what this all has to do with Temple of the Dog (or maybe you've forgotten that this post started out as being about the grunge supergroup).

The first album we listened to that day? Temple of the Dog.

That's why it was so astonishing to see that the first show of the band's first-ever tour was scheduled for November 4, 2016.

From about 4:40 pm to 6:15 pm on 11/4/06, we listened to the Temple album and then the first nine tracks of Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy. I think we must have played Scrabble during that time because the timing makes more sense that way. Then there was a two-and-a-half hour gap, during which we went out to dinner at Aladdin's. Every year from then on, we again went to Aladdin's to celebrate our anniversary, usually on November 4 itself but with some exceptions (such as in 2008 when November 4 was Election Day and we were Obama volunteers, and in 2011 when my aunts Mary Beth and Lynn had their wedding that weekend). That night, we sat across from each other at a table in the upper level of the restaurant, conversing in a way that was simultaneously very familiar and very new, each of us adjusting to the idea that we were now, finally, on an actual date with each other. I ordered a bowl of chili and a pita wrap. Cara got the Garden Pocket ("Garden Pocket? Garden Pocket!!!" we no doubt joked with each other), which she some time (months or maybe even years) later confessed she didn't actually like very much but she wanted to have something light because she was afraid I would think badly of her if she ate too much. I remember at one point her telling me a story about being in high school and she and a friend would go on dates with guys and order salad and just pick at it, then go home and order pizza together. Because they thought that was how girls were supposed to act on dates. A lot more could be written about that, but it's not the point of this post. Fortunately, on all our subsequent visits to Aladdin's Cara got things that she enjoyed a lot more!

When we returned to my apartment we listened to a single (22 minute long) track, "Storm," by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The band opened with the first section of this track at both the Chicago show we attended together and the Cleveland show on September 22, 2015. Both times I was brought nearly to tears by the beauty of the music. Perhaps I subconsciously recalled listening to it on that long-ago November night and that had a little something to do with my reaction. After this there was another long gap in the music listening, during which we watched Return of the Jedi, which I suggested because Cara had told me that she had seen only the first two movies of the original Star Wars trilogy (whereas I was a huge Star Wars fan). I did not have a sofa in my tiny apartment. We laid next to each other on the floor, on our stomachs with our heads facing the TV - which also sat on the floor; my place was quite sparsely furnished - to watch the movie. I'm not sure how into the movie Cara was, really, but we were both very happy to be with each other.

After that came the last album we listened to, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky. During this time we were sitting together on the floor, spilling our guts out to each other. And then the last song of the album, "Your Hand in Mine," became the soundtrack to our first kiss at about one in the morning.

I didn't have a bed in my apartment either, just a single mattress on the floor. I feel stupid to this day for not offering the mattress to her and instead having her sleep next to it in my sleeping bag, but fortunately she didn't hold that against me! During future visits we would take turns sleeping on the mattress and floor - Cara's apartment, by contrast, had a king-size bed so there was no such issue there. The two of us did, however, both experience a great deal of difficulty falling asleep while we were in each other's presence, bed or no bed. We were afraid that this would be an issue that would never go away! Of course, it eventually did (I really don't remember how long that took).

If you've been keeping track while reading this and my other recent blog posts, you might have noticed that, of the four artists whose music we listened to on our first date, three (Temple of the Dog, Okkervil River, and Explosions in the Sky) are bands I've seen live in just the last two months and the fourth (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) I saw live on Cara's birthday last year!

Going to that Temple of the Dog show in Philadelphia on Friday, it struck me, how would I have reacted if I could somehow have been told, sitting in my apartment with Cara on November 4, 2006 and listening to that great album, that in exactly ten years I'd be going to the first show of the band's first ever tour? I'm sure I'd be thrilled and amazed, and then I'd probably wonder, "Will Cara be there?"

"No," would be the answer.

"Oh, what happens with her?"

"She moves to Cleveland in 2008 and the two of you get married in 2011." And that wouldn't really surprise me. This, on the other hand: "Then she dies of lung cancer in 2015."

Life really does have a way of taking the oddest turns, in ways both wonderful and horrifying.

While waiting for the show at the Tower Theater on Friday night, I'm sure I was far from alone in thinking that it was hard to believe that this was really happening. When the band took the stage, the roar from the crowd in the sold out theater was like nothing I'd ever heard at the beginning of a concert. "Welcome to the first, ever, full length Temple of the Dog show," Chris Cornell said to the audience, sparking another roar just as loud. I mean, wow. How often do you get an opportunity to experience something like that?

The band opened with album opener "Say Hello 2 Heaven," and as I've experienced many times over the last year and a half, a particular few lines of a song reached out and grabbed me right in the heart. Those lyrics on this occasion?

I, I never wanted

To write these words down for you

With the pages of phrases

Of things we'll never do

The show was everything I'd ever hoped a Temple of the Dog show might be. Well, almost everything. Eddie Vedder (who, on the original album, was more a guest vocalist than an actual band member) was not present. But this hardly detracted from the highly emotional evening. On "Hunger Strike," Cornell had the audience sing Vedder's part, and it was beautiful. By the end of their two hour, ten minute performance, the band had played not only all ten songs from their album, but also the fantastic Chris Cornell song "Seasons" from the Singles movie soundtrack, several Mother Love Bone songs, and a number of other covers of artists ranging from Black Sabbath to The Cure. It was a night I will absolutely never forget.

(Whether I would have been able to talk Cara into going with me is something I'll just have to go on wondering about. She liked Temple of the Dog a lot but not nearly to the level I do. She'd certainly have been interested in the show and in taking a trip together but she'd also certainly have been apprehensive about the price. The show sold out instantly and I ended up dropping $250 after fees on StubHub for a very good seat in the 12th row of the theater. I wrote earlier this year that a Florence + the Machine show was the most expensive concert ticket I'd ever purchased but was well worth the price - this show was far more expensive, and again, was worth every penny.)

I remember that before we got married, I told Cara that I thought November 4 would always be very significant to me, perhaps even more significant than our wedding anniversary. After we got married, I decided that November 4 and June 12 were about equal in significance. But as more time has passed since Cara's death? I'm once more leaning toward November 4 being on top. It was so much more than a typical first date. It was two people who had already formed an amazing connection with each other, at long last really opening up to each other and taking that connection to a whole new wonderful level.

And what a way to commemorate the tenth anniversary of that occasion.

I had originally intended for this post to cover my whole trip to Philadelphia, but I guess once I get going with a story about Cara and me, it's hard for me to stop! So my visit to Valley Forge will have to wait for my next post, which will be coming soon.

Our song

"Honey - they're playing our song!"

It's an instantly recognizable cliche. That one song that, above all others, has special meaning to a relationship. That for whatever reason, instantly makes someone recall why they fell in love with their partner. I'm curious, now that I think of it, about roughly what fraction of all couples actually have an "our song." Many undoubtedly do; some probably don't. If anyone reading this would like to comment about whether they have an "our song," and if so what it is and how it came to be as such, I'd love to hear it!

Music was an integral part of my relationship with Cara, so it's not surprising that there are a number of songs with meaning to our relationship. However, if asked to pick just one that I considered "our song," it would be an easy choice. (I suspect that Cara, if pressed, would have made the same choice as me, but honestly I can't be completely sure.)

If you're reading this somewhere you can listen to music, go ahead and hit play on this video:

I'll engage in a moment of pedantry and point out that this piece is technically not a song, because it does not contain any singing. However, I'm pretty sure that colloquially speaking, most people would refer to the tracks on Explosions in the Sky albums and other similar pieces of music as "songs."

Explosions in the Sky are an Austin-based band and one of the foremost examples of the post-rock genre, with their intricate guitar parts and sweeping crescendos coming together to create rarely matched aural beauty. I'd say that if you want anything you're doing to seem epic, just put on some Explosions in the Sky while doing it. Many people (I myself not being one of them) are familiar with the band's music from their Friday Night Lights soundtrack.

Of all their majestic compositions, "Your Hand in Mine," the final track on their 2003 album The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place, stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of sheer beauty. How was it, specifically, that "Your Hand in Mine" became "our song"?

Truthfully, it has a lot to do with the title, which is interesting to think about because a piece of music with no lyrics could theoretically be given any title. Yet somehow, the title "Your Hand in Mine" is a perfect match for this piece of music. It makes me wonder whether the band came up with the title after writing the music, or if they wrote music specifically to go with that title. In any case, Cara and I both already thought that Explosions in the Sky, and "Your Hand in Mine" in particular, were gorgeous music before we started dating. As it happened, the moment that we first held hands with each other was a very special moment for us. So special that we both mentioned that moment in our wedding vows, vows that we wrote separately from each other so that we would not know the content of each other's vows until we read them during the ceremony! So that's a big part of why "Your Hand in Mine" is so special. It's funny - if the track had any other name, I'd still consider it a superlatively beautiful piece of music, but it likely wouldn't have nearly the same meaning to me.

I've been writing a (to be concluded) series of posts about the unique way Cara and I communicated and flirted with each other using sentences in the online word game Psychobabble. In fact, that wasn't the only unusual method of communicating and flirting that the two of us developed. The other major one involved the website last.fm, a website that can be used to track all the music one listens to. A user's profile page includes both charts of their music history as well as a display of recently listened tracks. Cara and I would entertain each other by creating playlists of songs that the other could see being updated in real time on our profile pages. Some of our playlists contained songs following a specific theme, while others would spell out little stories or messages by putting a series of song titles in order. The day after that fateful day when we started dating, I made a short playlist for Cara's viewing pleasure, and "Your Hand in Mine" was included. Just like all my chat logs and Psychobabble screenshots, I also still have access to my entire last.fm listening history, now covering over 11 years, so I can still see this playlist. Read the song titles going from the bottom (the first song played in the list) to the top (the last song played).

For Valentine's Day three months later, Cara made me an amazing storybook and accompanying mixtape with one song going with each page of the storybook. I posted this on Facebook about two months ago. The song for the first page of the storybook was "Your Hand in Mine."

 So you can see why this song was so important to us. But there's also something I haven't mentioned yet. Later that night, on the same day we first held hands, we also kissed for the first time. And the music playing in my apartment when that happened? "Your Hand in Mine."

I guess now it should be pretty obvious why this was our song.

I love a lot of Explosions' music, so I would enjoy one of their shows regardless, but when I saw that they were playing a show in Columbus and I began to consider going, I thought, they had better play "Your Hand in Mine." Looking at setlists from recent shows informed me that I had nothing to worry about, as they basically always play it, not surprising considering it's the band's most popular track.

Having only seen the band live one time in the past, with Cara at the Beachland Ballroom way back in April 2008, I eagerly anticipated the Columbus show. That long-ago Beachland show was quite good, but I only have vague memories of it. I think this week's show at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus will stick with me more strongly.

It was a stunning display of musicianship, and with a stunning light show that went perfectly with the epic instrumentals.

The band played a good mix of both older and more recent selections from their catalog. This suited me well, as I quite like their latest album, but find The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place and its immediate predecessor, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever from 2001 (gotta love those post-rock titles) far superior. Several times during the show I was just in a state of awe and joy at the overwhelming beauty emanating from the stage. Definite highlights included "With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept" and set closer "The Only Moment We Were Alone." As is typical for post-rock shows, there was no encore. Unlike some other post-rock bands I've seen, there was also no extended loud feedback outro on the closer - instead the band hit their last heavy note all together and then suddenly went silent at the same time that the stage was abruptly plunged into darkness. Thunderous applause quickly filled the room, with many cries of "encore," but I knew that no encore would be coming - and none was needed after that experience.

Although every part of the show was great, the most emotional was, of course, "Your Hand in Mine." I knew it was coming. I knew it would bring up some strong feelings. I didn't know exactly how I'd react, though. I was looking forward to finding out.

My eyes did well up with tears as the song began, and I kind of just stood there in a semi-numb state, letting the music wash over me. And then a rather remarkable thing happened, as my mind's eye began to play a sort of slideshow of various scenes from my years with Cara. From the first time we met all the way to Cara on her deathbed (her hand in mine), and many moments in between. Not that they followed any particular order. That first time holding hands certainly featured heavily, and that first kiss, sitting on the floor of my dimly lit little apartment. Numerous other moments as well. Our wedding on a perfect June day. The beach in Costa Rica on our honeymoon. The moment when I proposed to Cara and she fell down in the snow, the white-blanketed landscape around us glittering in the sunlight. Cara determinedly pedaling to the finish line in the Eastern Ohio Time Trial (a cycling race that, two days before the Explosions show, I had gone to for the first time without Cara). The two of us lying next to each other in bed, gazing into each other's eyes.

Although I felt very emotional throughout the eight minutes of "Your Hand in Mine," it was only in the last minute or so that I rather abruptly went from watery eyes to downright sobbing. I'm not sure why this happened. Perhaps it was the sense of finality. It took a while into the next song before I really recovered.

Why, I can imagine some might wonder, would I actively seek out an experience that would make me feel so sad? For me, it's nothing to wonder about. Feeling sadness over loss is an important part of being human. It's good to have an outlet for such feelings. And it's also possible to simultaneously feel sadness over loss, and happiness at having gotten to experience all those wonderful moments in the first place.

(I find that I have, numerous times since last summer, asked people if they've seen the movie Inside Out. Perhaps I should write a post about that some time.)

So that's the story of my and Cara's song. Does anyone else have a story to share about their own "our song"?

And speaking of memories of Cara, there's one I wanted to share that I didn't think merited its own post, so I'll put it here. On April 18 of last year, I was driving Cara to the ER, having at the time not even the tiniest inkling that she had less than a week to live. We were driving down Carnegie and as we got to the ER I was about to make a left turn here:

Although Cara was in a bad state, she noticed and correctly pointed out what I had failed to notice, that the sign says AMBULANCE ONLY so I shouldn't turn there. I continued driving one more block on Carnegie to the correct turn-in spot. So actually, basically the last thing Cara ever did while not in the hospital was correct me on a driving mistake I was about to make. I walk by that spot every day of work, twice in fact, once in the morning going from my parking garage to the lab and then once more on the return trip. And so that memory is something I think of a lot. Kind of funny what causes certain memories to stay with you.

Will You Marry Me?

Today is Valentine's Day - the first, of course, since Cara's passing. There are several dates each year that I know will always make me especially miss her, for instance, her birthday, our wedding anniversary, and the anniversary of our first date. Valentine's Day wouldn't rank especially high on the list because it wasn't something we generally made that big a deal of. It did make me think of a nice story, though. Probably our most extravagant Valentine's Day outing was in 2010. It was actually on the evening of the 13th (a Saturday, just like this year) that we went out to eat at our favorite restaurant, L'Albatros, a fabulous French restaurant in University Circle. We took advantage of a gift card we had received for Christmas and enjoyed one of the best meals we'd ever eaten. Cara wrote a review of the outing on her Girl About Cleveland blog and I encourage you to look at it. Her writing is wonderfully evocative.

In preparing for the date, Cara really went all out, not only putting on a nice dress but also going to La Barberia in our Little Italy neighborhood earlier that day to get her hair and makeup professionally done.

Hair and makeup pictured, but that's not the dress, in case you wondered. :-p

I don't remember whether it was that night or on one of the following days, but Cara admitted to me that the reason she did this was she wanted to look especially nice because she was expecting I would propose to her.

We had already had discussions about getting engaged, so this wasn't coming up out of the blue. I never had any intention of a Valentine's proposal, though. As I told her, I thought it would be far too cliched. We ended up getting engaged about three weeks later in a really wonderful way. I've told that story before, but I also want to add some of the backstory that I haven't shared previously.

In December 2009, our first holiday season living together, we got an Advent calendar and took turns putting little objects (often candy, but some other things too) behind the doors for the other to open. At this point in time, we were already fully intending to get married and had discussed this openly with each other. I had shown Cara a few rings I was thinking of so that I could get her opinions, and based on her feedback had narrowed it down to two choices. (Partly because I was living on a grad student stipend and partly, again, not wanting to be cliched, I didn't want to get a traditional diamond ring and Cara was fully on board with that. I ended up choosing a ruby with four tiny diamonds around it and she absolutely loved the ring.) So anyway, I was thinking of putting the engagement ring behind the final door of the Advent calendar. (Yeah, yeah, that would have been pretty cliched!)

I procrastinated, and it turned out the particular ring I most wanted to get was not in stock, and I could not get it in time for Christmas, so I scratched that plan. Over the next couple of months, I think Cara was starting to wonder, "What's taking him so long?" We had been a couple for more than three years, had lived together for more than half a year, were obviously madly in love with each other, and had talked about engagement rings. What was I waiting for? Well, a confession. I didn't tell Cara this, but there was an unfortunate factor discouraging me from going ahead and proposing. (She was aware of what I was dealing with, but not of how it influenced my thinking in regards to getting engaged.) In October I had run the Towpath Marathon, the only marathon I ever ran and a great success as I finished second in a time of 2:44:38. It was an amazing experience, but unfortunately, in the course of training for the marathon, I developed really bad tendinitis in both my ankles. I ran through it, expecting that it would go away if I just took some time off from running after the marathon. This did not happen. If anything, at first it seemed to get even worse. I was in a lot of pain and feeling very frustrated and this was having a definite impact on my emotional state. And I wasn't really keen on getting engaged during what was not a particularly happy point in my life.

Things started to improve, a little (although six years later that ankle tendinitis has still not completely gone away). More importantly, my emotional state started to stabilize. I decided I shouldn't let this get in the way of Cara and I moving forward with our lives together.

After almost ordering a ring before Christmas but ending up not doing so, by Valentine's Day I still had not ordered the ring. But I guess that wonderful date night triggered something in me, because it was at lunch time on Monday the 15th that I placed the order (isn't it great having a searchable archive of all your emails from over the years?). Due to an unexpected delay with the shipping, I got the ring about two weeks later. Then it was a matter of finding the perfect time to propose.

It's appropriate that Lent has just started, because that also ties in to this story. Starting in 2009, Cara's first full year living in Cleveland, and continuing all the way through last year, during each Lenten season we picked one Friday and went to the fish fry at Sts. Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Mayfield Road in Cleveland Heights. We weren't churchgoers; it was just a really fun thing to do. We loved having little traditions like that to share. In 2010, we went to the fish fry on March 5, just days after I received the ring. Cara must have suspected something was up. There's no way she could have actually known that I had just gotten her engagement ring, because I had had it shipped to my work and it had never been somewhere she would have seen. However, as we stood in line to get our food, she not so subtly patted me down as if she was trying to see if there was anything hidden in my coat pockets. Of course, she acted all innocent when I asked what she was doing. I did not, in fact, have the ring with me at the fish fry. As usual, we had a great time together.

The next day, Saturday, we went for a walk at the Cleveland Metroparks Euclid Creek Reservation. Despite being March, there had recently been a large snowstorm, and the ground was blanketed with snow. That weekend saw the coming of a thaw. As we walked on the path alongside Euclid Creek, I recall watching in wonder as a tremendous flow of large ice chunks rushed downstream, carried by the heavily flowing water.

On that day, for the first time during an outing with Cara, I was carrying the ring with me.

We walked for some time. We always loved going for walks together, ever since even before we started dating. Now, I'll let you in on a very silly inside joke we had. As I recall, it started on a trip we took to Hamilton, Ontario to see a concert. We camped at a park on Lake Ontario and, while there, went to check out the beach. In the sand, Cara spelled out the words I LOVE YOU. I smiled as I watched. However, she was not done writing. Who knows what put this idea into her mind, but she added two more words, to complete the phrase I LOVE YOU BOBA FETT. (Boba Fett is the name of a Star Wars character. Cara, unlike me, wasn't even really a Star Wars fan. Ah, the mysteries of the human mind...) We both thought this was hilarious, and from that day on, we would occasionally write I LOVE YOU BOBA FETT in random places. And one such place was there in the snow along the trail at Euclid Creek Reservation.

It was around then that I considered popping the question. It just didn't feel right to me, though, because it was a very gray day. So I decided to wait, for which I'm glad.

The next day was Sunday, March 7. In the morning, we went to a spin class together at Urban Active in Beachwood, as we often did that winter. In the afternoon, Cara was going to see the recently released movie Alice in Wonderland with a friend (I had no interest in seeing the movie.) It was a beautiful day, and I asked Cara if, before she went to the movie, she'd like to go for a walk with me in "the ravine" - Roxboro Ravine, a section of Doan Brook in between North Park Boulevard and Fairhill Road. (Later that year I wrote a whole blog post about my love for Roxboro Ravine.)

Unlike the previous cloudy day, the sun shone brightly on that Sunday, illuminating the snow that still covered most of the ground. The whole landscape sparkled. With mild temperatures, it was a great day for a walk. As we descended on the trail into the ravine, a place we had walked several times in the past, Cara remarked to me that the ravine was "special" to her. Secretly, it thrilled me when she said this. I, of course, agreed with her.

After walking for some time, we reached the spot pictured here:

I took this picture then. I was carrying the ring box, by the way, in my camera bag.

Since Cara was going to the movie with her friend, I said that we should probably head back to the car. She began to do so. Then I added, "But first, there's one more thing." She turned back around to see me down on one knee, holding out the ring. "Will you marry me?"

In her excitement, Cara fell on her backside in the snow. It was truly a perfect moment! She said yes, of course.

So then we did return to the car, and Cara did go to the movie, while I went on a bike ride. That night, Cara, her friend, and I went to the Happy Dog on the West Side for a little celebratory dinner to cap off a wonderful day.

And a little addendum about that engagement ring. Last fall when I was looking at pictures from the Cleveland Museum of Art's annual chalk festival, I was surprised when I looked very closely at this picture from the 2009 chalk festival and saw that Cara was wearing, on her left hand ring finger, what appeared to be her engagement ring (it's hard to see without looking at the original full size image).

I was very confused for a moment, because this picture was taken some six months before we got engaged. Then I remembered the other ring I had gotten Cara. It was a garnet ring. She had been telling me that it would be nice if I got her some jewelry, and as I recall, I bought it for her at a shop in Lake Placid, New York that we were at together during family vacation. It was nothing fancy, but she really liked that ring. The engagement ring was similar in appearance (although obviously much nicer) and she told me that this similarity was one of the reasons she loved her engagement ring so much. I don't know where that garnet ring is now. Perhaps I'll come across it someday. The engagement ring remains with Cara.