Orange Is the New Black

Larry had a piece in it, and not just any piece. It was the “Modern Love” column, the weekly personal essay about love and relationships. He had been working on it for a long time, and I knew it was about our long-delayed decision to get married. Other than that, I had no idea what the
Times
readers and I had in store.
    He described, with great humor, our untraditional courtship, and why neither of us really thought it was important to get married, although we’d been to twenty-seven weddings together. But something had changed.
    THERE was never a tipping point, no eureka moment when I realized that doing the most traditional thing possible was a good idea. Some guys say they know immediately She’s the One. Not me. Whether it’s a sweater or software, it takes some time for me to know if I want to keep something, one reason I always save receipts. I can’t say there was an instance when I looked into the pale blue eyes of the girl I met over cornedbeef hash at a cafe in San Francisco and thought, “This is it.” Now, after eight years, I know.
    When did I know? Was it the way she helped me deal with the death of my grandfather? The relief I felt when she finally answered her cellphone on Sept. 11? That great hike in Point Reyes? Because she sobbed with joy when the Sox finally won? The way my nephews greet her like a rock star when she walks into the room?
    Perhaps I should have known right from the start, that morning in the middle of our cross-country trip, when she required one last stop at Arthur Bryant’s in Kansas City for a half slab of ribs for breakfast (and 10 minutes into the feast saying to me, “Hey, baby, why don’t you pop open a beer?”).
    Or did I not truly know until seven years later when we found ourselves forced apart for more than a year? Who can say? It’s the big moments, maybe, but it’s the little moments as much or even more.
    I could of course conjure up every one of those instances in perfect detail, right down to the chewy tang of those ribs and how good that beer had tasted.
    Slow as ever, yet indeed as sure as it gets, it dawned on me: She wants to get married. And if that’s true, then I want to get married. To her. This is perhaps the least original idea I’ve had in a long time, but I needed to get here myself, on my own terms. And after all these years one thing I actually had going for me was the element of surprise.
    So what the hell, let’s do it. I still don’t believe marriage is the only path to happiness or completeness as a person, but it’s the right thing for us. So I asked her. Or, more accurately, what I said, sitting next to her on that silly island in a scene straight out of
Bride’s
magazine, was something about love and commitment and not going anywhere and here’s theserings I got you, and if you want actually to make it official, that’s cool, and if you don’t, that’s cool, too. And if you want to have a wedding, I’m into it, and if you don’t, who needs it. She’s still unclear what it was I was asking, exactly, but when she got done laughing, she said yes. And then she threw off her clothes and jumped in the water.
    My friends joke that I’ve been to 27 weddings and now it’s finally time for one funeral—for my singlehood. Which is sad like any funeral, sure, but this death is no tragic accident. I look at it more like euthanasia I’m performing on myself, a mercy killing.
    I’m ready, babe. Pull the plug.
    Even here, without him, I couldn’t imagine any sweeter Christmas present.
    I ALWAYS found New Year’s Eve a bore on the outside, but on the inside it held greater interest, and I was very conscious and grateful that it would be my only one at Danbury. It made sense that turning the calendar forward would make a prisoner feel more optimistic. Watching those numbers tick suggested progress.
    Much more than any New Year, even the Millennium, it felt for me like something was coming to a definitive end. Pop cried as we counted down at midnight—it was her thirteenth New Year’s in prison, and her last. As I watched her, I tried to imagine the conflicting rush of emotions when you considered so much survival, regret, resilience, and lost time.
    It seemed like half the Camp was focused on getting Pop home in one piece. She was supposed to be finished working in the dining hall—weirdly, prisoners do earn and accumulate vacation days in the BOP—but she didn’t even make it one day. I caught her back in the kitchen and