Weather Helmed

July 2006:  I sidled up next to Matt at the bar, leaning in to hear more of his conversation with his friend Jon.  They were discussing a charter sailing trip in the Caribbean for the next summer.  Their words were scattered, barely heard over the rising din of laughter and rock and roll that typically characterized the tiny sushi restaurant.  Crowded together, five of us stood at the long, shiny obsidian bar –  me, Matt, Jonny, Jon, and Jon’s father.  We were enjoying this last evening of Jon’s father’s stay in San Francisco.  As I peeked my head over Matt’s shoulder, he turned to me and smiled.  “We’re planning to go sailing in the Caribbean next June.  Are you interested?”  Although my mind immediately started racing with ideas of what this question could possibly mean, I simply smiled back at him and said, “Sure, if I have nothing better to do…”

That night, I went home pondering the significance of his question about the sailing trip.  We had only been dating for about 4 weeks.  I was leaving in two weeks to finish my last year of law school in Virginia, 3,000 miles away.  My over-analytical self went into high gear.  Was he just asking me to be polite? was he joking? would he have asked me about something so far in the future if he didn’t have strong feelings about me?  I reeled the craziness in, though, and eventually wrote it off to just a fun evening, a fair amount of sake, and the spontenaity of a new relationship.

Matt, of course, now claims, that he never asked me if I wanted to go to the Caribbean with them.  Doesn’t matter too much, though, because they never did charter a boat.  Instead, they bought one (a 40-foot Valiant sailboat christened “Syzygy”) and Matt and I are getting married and then we – me, Matt, Jon & Jonny – are all leaving in January 2010 to sail around the world.

Somehow, nothing about that night at the bar seems odd to me anymore – I think we all got what we secretly wanted.