Until Liz, I’d never dated another runner. So we began to incorporate a version of “Eye Spy” on our runs. One of us would take and send a photo of some isolated detail—a grafittied sign, a small cairn of rocks, an ivied trellis—with some cryptic hint to the object's whereabouts—two blocks north of Christmas, due east of summer—and the other would have to find it on the subsequent run. 7 miles was the longest duration it took to find each of the some dozen or so rounds.

Our love was conceived in these games.

Perhaps a way to not take things so seriously. Or perhaps, rather, to amplify the magnitude of the mundane, where everything and every moment carried the simultaneous gravity and weightlessness of a miracle. Every turned stone was a profound revelation. We were giddy and unstoppable. 

Games have structure, and rules. They function as a system wherein every component serves a particular purpose, yet allowing for infinite variation and possibility within the system of parameters. But we were bound by none, allowing us to develop our own narrative through the constant tensions of structure and chaos, until what emerged was the undeniable beauty of two lives hovering tangentially in space and time. 

And we learned that play is crucial to exploration, to commitment, and to growth, as we faced whatever challenges, big or small, that came—and will continue to come—our way. 

The first thing we ever cooked together was pork larb lettuce wraps. It was nothing fancy—minced pork cooked in jarred Thai sweet chili sauce with crinkly cups of crisp and watery iceberg (iceberg is about to have a renaissance, fyi). We would spend days off going for runs and making breakfast, decreeing our Ten Commandments of the kitchen—Romance Your Tools; Don’t Underestimate Cheap Buns; F*ck Artisanal Peanut Butter—brandishing our tongs in the air like a mad orchestral conductor. 

We’ve cooked a thousand meals since then, and we’ll cook countless more. And though we’re often cooking for a public audience, it’s over the quiet and humble meals we prepare at home, eating with chopsticks in the aspic orange light of our living room, that our love continues to grow. 

This past September we took a trip to Italy for my 40th birthday. I’d wanted to visit Sardinia with Liz, so she booked our flights and somehow managed to get scores of our dearest friends and loved ones up to Chicago for a surprise party the day before departure. Finally recovering from the shock, though still overwhelmed with gratitude from the surprise, we finally set foot on the old cobbled streets of Rome before ferrying over to the island. I’d searched online and found an antique jewelry dealer and procured a hundred year-old ring—art deco, I’m instructed to say when describing it. 

Nearing our last day in Castelsardo, Sardinia, we woke in the still-dark morning to hike up to the old town’s castle for the sunrise. Liz had made espresso in the Bialetti coffee maker and placed it out on the terrace. We sipped in silence and headed out for the hill. While all of Italy was quiet, my heart thundered like timpani drums, the small ring jangling loose in my pocket. There wasn’t a soul in sight, and as we rounded the old wall on the side of a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean, there on the ground along the cobbled path was a tiny red tinsel heart, winking in the first glimmer of sunlight, marking the spot where Liz said she would marry me. 

Truth be told, I can’t really remember what was said in the seconds and minutes that immediately followed, but I remember feeling enveloped by a sensation of gratitude, of excitement, and also of peace. I knew, then, that this moment marked the beginning of a new chapter, with many more to come. Chapters of love notes and dead bugs, dragging in old signs and forsaken furniture out of alleyways. Chapters of staying up late and waking up early. Of taking the scenic route, just because. Of buying ingredients simply because the name is beautiful. Chapters of floral arrangements of lemongrass stalks, of dried half-limes in the windowsill, of pages of books forever stained with the imprint of a pressed flower because, in that particular moment, we recognized something was beautiful and claimed it, making it ours forever.

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