After Lynn and I named the relationship, something settled.

Not because the love had suddenly appeared. It had already been there. The desire had already been there. The daily choosing had already been there. But now the truth had a name.

We were boyfriend and girlfriend.

That may sound ordinary. For me, it was not ordinary at all.

The second year of our relationship did not unfold in grand gestures or carefully scheduled dates. We still were not following a formal dating script. Every day together felt like one. We were inseparable, falling into a rhythm that made Lynn the center of my life without making her the only part of my life.

I was working. I was still connected to The Oaks. Graduate school was coming closer. Lynn was working too, making pottery, thinking practically about life, managing the realities of cystic fibrosis without letting the illness define her.

We were not living in fantasy.

We were building a life.

Pottery and Pride

One afternoon, Lynn spread out pieces she planned to take to a consignment shop.

I loved seeing her work that way — not only as the woman I loved, but as an artist deciding how her work should enter the world.

I picked up a pair of earrings with a bluish base color. Across the surface she had traced her signature designs, abstract shapes and patterns that made them ornate, unmistakably hers. Beside them sat a green bowl, the same confident hand drawing its pattern across the glaze.

She asked what I thought of the prices.

“Ten for the earrings,” she said. “Twenty for the bowl.”

I shook my head, smiling.

“Fifteen for the earrings. Thirty for the bowl. People will pay more. They’re that good.”

I could be accused of bias. I was in love, after all. But others were buying her pottery too. She was selling in shops, and it was her talent, not just my admiration, that proved its worth.

My suggestions were not only pride.

They were faith in what she created.

Valentine’s Day — A Proclamation

By February, the rhythm of our lives was deepening. Valentine’s Day came, and with it a new side of me.

I walked into a grocery store where roses stood in buckets near the entrance. My heart raced, but not with shyness. With something closer to awe.

“Hi,” I said to the florist, loud enough for others to hear. “I need roses for the one I love. My girlfriend.”

My girlfriend.

I wanted the world to hear it.

I wanted the world to notice. To see me carrying those roses out the door. To ask why I looked so full of light.

Later, at a jewelry shop, I leaned across the counter.

“I need something for someone I love. My girlfriend.”

The clerk smiled. “Gold or silver?”

“Silver,” I said instantly.

I knew.

It felt transcendent, almost like a religious awakening. As though I had discovered something miraculous and wanted to proclaim it from rooftops.

For once, attention was not terrifying.

It was a kind of glory.

Old Wounds — The Azalea Festival

But old wounds still surfaced.

That April, Lynn was at her pottery booth at the Azalea Festival, demonstrating her craft. I stopped by, but she was busy, surrounded by questions and customers.

She was not ignoring me.

She was working.

She was in her world, doing something that mattered to her.

I wandered through the festival alone, past food stands, couples laughing with ice cream cones, children chasing balloons. The day was bright with spring, but inside I felt adrift.

The feeling was familiar before I could name it.

You don’t belong.

You’re on the outside again.

She wasn’t rejecting me. I knew that. But knowing something intellectually does not always quiet the old ache. The boy who once felt invisible still lived somewhere inside me, and sometimes he returned in moments that had nothing to do with the present.

The feeling passed.

That mattered too.

I did not collapse into it. I did not turn it into an accusation against Lynn. I did not need her to stop being herself in order to reassure me. I could feel the old wound and still know the present was different.

Healing comes in layers.

Sometimes the ache resurfaces when you least expect it.

And sometimes love means learning that the ache is old, even when the person in front of you is safe.

Belonging — With Dusty, With Lynn

By late spring, the ache was fading again. Our social circle had grown: poetry readings, friends like Thomas and Jean, evenings in cafés. Sundays meant the Coastline Convention Center, where Dusty greeted us like family.

Dusty created a welcoming atmosphere in the lounge where she worked. I continued to gravitate toward that presence, no doubt because it touched a lifelong desire for a motherly figure who could notice without judging, welcome without demanding, and make a room feel safe.

One mid-June evening, I came alone after work, knowing Lynn was at the pottery studio. Dusty asked warmly, “How’s Lynn doing?”

I told her Lynn was working but would join me later.

Her question carried recognition.

We were seen as a couple, inseparable even when apart.

When Lynn arrived, she slipped into the chair beside me. I turned to her, delighted, our eyes meeting with unspoken joy.

“Did I tell you I love you today?”

She smiled, and I leaned in to kiss her lips. Not a quick peck, but a kiss that lingered, a kiss of emotion and devotion, not routine. It was never just a greeting. It was always fresh, as if we had not kissed only hours earlier.

In private, the passion burned more intensely. But even here, in public, our affection brimmed with meaning.

And it was not only me who reached for her.

There were plenty of moments when she leaned toward me, initiating the same tenderness.

Public Displays of Affection — The Pottery Party

Each December, we went to a Christmas party through Lynn’s pottery class.

At first, I worried how she would introduce me. By the second year, there was no doubt. I was her boyfriend. We walked in hand in hand.

She knew I did not know anyone there, and she understood my unease. When I started to feel awkward, standing off to the side, she was in conversation with someone else.

I came up behind her, gently wrapped my arms around her, and said, “Hi.”

She turned, smiling. “Are you doing okay?”

“I am now.”

That could sound needy if misunderstood. It did not feel that way.

I was not asking her to rescue me from the room. I was finding my way back to the connection that made the room manageable. I could be uncomfortable and still remain present. I could move toward her without demanding that she stop being herself.

The private world between us was real, even in public.

Even in a room full of strangers, her presence helped me belong.

Toward Engagement

By summer 1994, engagement was already in the air.

It was not forced. It was not expected. It was not the next box to check because a relationship had reached the proper stage.

It felt like the natural next step of what we already knew.

I thought of Carly Simon’s song, “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be.” Its melody was haunting, its lyrics bleak — parents distant from one another, couples clinging and clawing, love reduced to obligation. When I first heard it, I thought of my own parents, their perfunctory gestures, their indifference that left me feeling unseen.

Psychologists say we repeat what is familiar, even when we vow it will be different.

And yet, here I was, living something wholly unlike what I had known.

Even in our kisses, I felt the difference. Our eyes lingered. Our lips met not out of duty but out of desire. They were declarations, not routines. For all I knew, passion was supposed to fade into habit, but with Lynn it did not. Every gaze, every kiss said: this is not what you grew up with. This is love, alive, chosen, free.

Every time Lynn expressed affection with a touch or a kiss, she expressed something we both welcomed. Her gestures mirrored my own.

This was so different from what I had seen anywhere.

By the end of the second year, the one who once felt invisible — the one who had learned to disappear — was no longer living the same way.

I was connected.

I was loved.

I belonged.

And the question of commitment was no longer somewhere far in the distance.

It was standing right in front of us.