Just beyond

A chilly weekend away in southern Maine at the end of March doesn't exactly scream "baby moon," but that's what we called it.

Over the last eight years, Peter and I have taken many, many trips - both big and small - together. Our first was to Williamsburg, Virginia about six months after we met. The town was all decked out for Christmas, and we bopped around eating and drinking and generally feeling extremely adult about the whole thing. That Sunday afternoon was drizzly and cold, but there was a promise of fireworks once it got dark enough, so Peter got a taste of how serious I am about pyrotechnics because we stayed on that town green until the bitter, celebratory end.

Then there were the weekends in New York, before we lived there. Weekends in D.C., after we lived there. Weekends in Boston, before we moved here for good. There were wedding celebrations in Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, North Carolina. Winter weekends skiing in the Berkshires, driving into the wilds of Canada, bopping down to Newport.

And big trips. Taking off for nearly a month to roam around Brazil, and then Hawaii. Week-long stays in Paris, and Charleston.

In the middle of our Brazil trip, which we took off on just days after getting engaged, we went to different beaches all the time, ate so much grilled meat, brought cards everywhere we went to play gin rummy because everyone around us seemed to be doing the same, and I remember one night, probably about halfway into the trip when Peter and I were out at bar where the floor was covered with a thick spread of sand underneath our feet, he said very casually, "It's so lucky that I get to spend all my days with you."

In celebration of these days together, when it is just an us, we ate fried sea food, and took a long walk by the steely grey water, perched as gracefully as possible atop bar stools, and toasted to this lovely, lucky life we have together, and to all the lovely, lucky things that await us, just beyond our line of sight.