Rachel's Vows:

A few years ago, while sifting through some old stuff in the basement of my mom’s house, I came across a school assignment that I had saved from when I was ten years old and in 5th grade. The assignment included a series of metaphors and similes that I had been asked to complete to convince my teacher that I knew the difference between the two literary terms. Though I completed the assignment successfully, my teacher did draw a big red circle around my final simile, next to which she wrote "oh, really?" I had written the following simile: "My boyfriend is alike a golden dream".

Although I did not demonstrate a talent for writing fine verse, nor did I have a boyfriend, I did show that I was thinking and fantasizing, as I’ve been known to do, about my future companion. First, my golden dream had to be handsome and dashing. Second, he had to day dream, as I did, about life’s possibilities and play the “what if” game. (What if I were the first ten-year-old pianist to win the Van Cliburn piano competition and tour all over the world with the New York Philharmonic?) But most important, my golden dream had to whole-heartedly appreciate the Suzuki piano literature like the Bach and Mozart minuets, which I played when I was ten years old.

When my piano arrived at our house in Oakland shortly after we moved in and shortly before we started going out, you sat down in the rocking chair next to the piano and asked me to play for you. It may sound like a small gesture, but it seemed huge to me. I remember sitting on the piano bench thinking this is a person who is genuinely interested in hearing what I have to offer, the art I have cultivated for the duration of my life. And I knew when I looked at you sitting in the rocking chair contentedly that I might be living in the same house as my golden dream.

This moment is a particularly vivid one in my memory because it best represents one of the most important aspects of our relationship: our ability to listen to one another and care about what the other person says, whether it be through music, writing or conversation. I am always eager to hear what you have to say and I consider it a privilege to talk with you daily, to read your articles and receive your witty emails during the day. Likewise, I appreciate that you care so much about my opinion and what I think.

After three and a half years together, you have far surpassed my childhood fantasy and I know that you are the ideal lifelong companion for me. I’m thrilled to marry, and I know we will have a long, rich and fulfilling life together.

You are so smart, imaginative and intuitive.

Your sense of humor invigorates me.

You challenge me consistently and urge me to maintain the highest expectations of myself. And you demand the same of yourself.

Your optimism and curiosity are constantly refreshing.

You maintain the highest level of integrity in your daily life, your professional life and your relationship with me.

You have a discerning eye and ear and always stop to savor an architectural detain or phrase of music.

You are extremely good to your family.

I am passionate about you, Christopher, and I have complete faith in you.

Every morning before work when you walk me to the door in your slippers and messy hair and hug and kiss me good-bye, I feel a sense of gratitude and relief because I know I no longer have to fantasize, at least where my golden dream is concerned.

Christopher's Vows:

back in the sixth and seventh grade, in berkeley at least, there was a highly ritualized way of asking someone to become your girlfriend or boyfriend. there was nearly always a go-between involved: you asked your friend to ask the girl you liked if she wanted to go with you-that was always the phrase-and it’s a great one when you stop and think about it, actually-there’s no destination, just this agreement to go with the other person wherever your little seventh-grade lives might take you, even if that was only down to the oaks theatre to sneak into halloween three.

nearly three and a half years ago, in san francisco, under an awning, in the rain, i attempted the modern twenty something version of that ritual. this time there was no intermediary-it was just the two, as the fine family likes to say. i swear i remember hearing your breath catch a little as i began, which i took to be a good sign. i don’t remember exactly what i said-in fact, your uncle patrick asked me the other night what kind of poetry i used, because it must have taken some shelley or keats action to win the young and beautiful rachel fine. frankly I can’t remember exactly, my heart was racing so, my toes hanging over the cliff of the conversation-but i just kept moving my mouth and manufacturing words. i remember you didn’t stop me right away, which i also took to be a good sign. and you haven’t stopped me yet.

when we were young we sometimes thought those seventh-grade relationships will stretch forever, when in fact they tended to be measured in days, or in hours, and we really had no idea what forever even meant. but now forever is the clearest of all words for me. all its mystery and vaguely overwhelming tinge has burned off like fog and I know that it is just you, a synonym for rachel fine. you have completely reordered my idea of what it means to be kind, to be thoughtful, to be loyal, to be creative, to be wise. people talk about getting their priorities in order; you are the catalog raisonné of priorities, fierce and sure and accurate in this uncanny way about what is necessary and right and true. as i think is the case in nearly every successful relationship, in many ways you and i are very different; but your most humbling and thrilling quality for me is that all of the things i would like to improve in myself-from patience, to accounting skills, to thinking about the arc of a life-the arc of two lives now-instead of sliding from day to day-all of those things i turn and find already perfected in you.

rachel, i love the way you live for yourself and for others, and find no contradiction between the two, indeed no boundary between the two, the way you’ve taught me that when a person lives for another it can shore up and extend and sweeten his own independence; i love the way you look when you get up in the morning, and when you climb into bed at night, on glasses days and nonglasses days alike. i love you at the piano; i love the way you are so serious, with eyebrows furrowed, and so childlike at the same time; i love that you are for me that ideal reader that every writer longs for.

rachel, i promise to learn to pick out schumann from schubert, rossini from reynaldo hayn, viola de gamba from a violincello. i promise never to repeat the terrific faux pas of referring to a composer names hey-din. i promise to keep you well-stocked always with peet’s and with good olive oil.

i promise to be next to you and to love you till we are old and rickety and i have to read the large-print version of the new york times and you have to put your ear right up next to the speaker to hear the faraway strains of brahms or janacek. even then i think i may find hard to believe my staggering good fortune.