On Vacation

We're on vacation. First we spent a few days in Manhattan, and then we drove through the Berkshires, up through Vermont, and into New Hampshire, where a friend's parents have kindly given us the use of their lake house for a week. Bill and I were married here in 1991. It's also the place where I'd forced him to propose to me in 1990. I was twenty-three, he was twenty-four, and we had been dating for about eight months.

For years I've wondered, what the hell was I thinking? I couldn't, for the life of me, recreate the thought process that sent me rushing pell-mell into marriage, pulling poor helpless Bill along with me, when we were barely out of college. I had an epiphany on the way up here. It wasn't so much that I wanted to get married. I knew that we were too young, that getting married was crazy, but the craziness of the idea was part of its allure. Specifically, I wanted Bill to be crazy. He's one of the most rational, clear-headed people I know, and I wanted him to be so in love with me that he was willing to do something uncharacteristically rash and stupid.

In retrospect, that's maybe not the best reason to get married. But it all worked out. I'd like to think that it was due to an unusual amount of perspicacity on my part. But it was really just dumb luck.

Tonight we all went to a drive-in in Fairlee, Vermont, and saw "The Island."