Otherwise engaged

Cousin J wrote this afternoon. She and her boyfriend went canoeing and picnicking yesterday. He asked her to marry him.  She said yes.

(Can I get a woo-hoo?! My queen of advice has made of herself a good example. With a good man.)

This is not a surprise to anyone who knows Cousin J and her man. We all know couples like them .... a matter of when, not if, they'll be together forever.

Thinking of Cousin J finding her life love, though, made me more sentimental than I expected, as much as I expected this event.

On the east shore of Chesapeake Bay,
Memorial Day 2008

Cousin J is my third sister. Maybe closer to me than my own sisters. My dancing buddy. My chutzpah. My stabilizer. A girl whose intelligent stubbornness as a toddler made me afraid. Who as an adult uses those same qualities to overcome her own fears. Who speaks 3 languages. Who has lived in 3 countries. Who remembers the name of every one of my friends since high school and every story I've told about every one of them. Who tells it like it is. Who worries about making everything better than it is, and then tries to, and most often does.

I've written this many times before, but Cousin J rarely fails to make me think about what I really want. What I should tell the men I date. What I should look for in the men I can't seem to find.

Perhaps that is why her finding her man makes me so sentimental .... I'm thrilled, yet selfishily hope that even after marriage, she'll still be my chutzpah, my stabilizer.

This is what I wrote her, in way of a congratulations.

"I have some vivid memories. Standing in my kitchen, making cookies, as you told me about that "friend of Michael's" that you had, spur-of-the-moment, decided to go camping with for the weekend.

"Then at the Obama inauguration about 3 months later, as you were detailing how much fun you were having when there was no pressure to make a commitment to any one guy, since you'd be moving to Nicaragua and you wouldn't be taking any long-distance relationships with you. 

"Then about 3 months later, in my bathtub on the phone for 2 hours while the water grew cold, listening to you nearly crying over this connection that had intensified and how it was always "something," like this enormous geographical distance, that was keeping something really special from your grasp. 

"And then your joy a few months after that, when you came back from that D.C. Spring interim so, so in love. The security and calm you've had in your back pocket ever since.

"Really, joyous news. After all the bumps without each other and even the ones you've had together, you can see the serenity and the certainty in both of you and for that I am so grateful."