I remember waiting for the election results in 2000. Rob and I were sitting on the futon in my dorm room watching the numbers come in on my 14" TV. We are registered independents, and had both voted for Al Gore, although perhaps for different reasons. The environment was one of the issues that Rob cared most about, and he felt strongly that Gore was the right leader for that cause. And I felt strongly that George W. Bush was a pompous moron. For me, intelligence was a key issue in that election.

It was the first presidential election in which I'd been old enough to vote. Watching the results roll in, I had absolute confidence that the rest of America felt as I did, that no way would a man who could not properly put sentences together be voted President of the United States. I didn't follow polls, or politics, but I remember thinking he didn't have a chance, that his candidacy was a joke.

And I remember watching, dumbfounded and horrified, as he won. (Or at least was believed to have won, pending recounts.) There is no word strong enough for my disbelief at that moment.

A sense of unease settled over me, and what I remember most clearly from that evening is turning to Rob and saying, "What happens if we go to war?" That was my first thought. I don't know why that came to mind, except that I was so certain of his inability to lead that my mind jumped to the implications of a worst-case scenario. And I remember Rob scoffing at the notion of going to war, assuring me that wouldn't happen.

We were naive. We had no idea what could happen. And I mean all of us, not just Rob and me. Although certainly Rob and me. I was not a well-informed citizen. I paid no attention to the workings of our government or the issues in this country. I was a junior in college with other preoccupations.

Four years later, I voted against Bush again. This time I was more informed and better understood what was at stake, that there was more at stake than before. And this time, as I watched the results roll in, I knew better than to assume that the rest of America felt the same way I did. But I suspected, and hoped, that after the lies we'd been told and the mess we were in, this country would not re-elect the same man. And yet he won. There is no word strong enough for my dismay at that moment. And if I'm being honest, I'll admit to feeling disappointment in this country ever since.

In fact, I have pondered whether or not I belong here. Strong words, I know. But it has seemed clear that my views are not shared by the majority of citizens in this country. I've wondered if rather than living under certain laws and beliefs that I strongly don't support, I should move to a place that's a better fit for me. This is a great country, but it's not the only great country. It's blindly patriotic to think that it is. But I could never really consider leaving, at least not now, because being near family is more important to me than living in a country in which I feel understood and represented. And so I stay. And hope for change.

Which brings us to this election. I have supported Barack Obama since the primary season. I've donated money and volunteered time to his campaign, neither of which I ever considered doing in past elections. I believe in this man, fervently. He is not a savior, but he is the one for this moment, this dot on the global time line. His leadership at this pivotal point seems inevitable, ordained by history.

And so on Tuesday I voted for Barack Obama as emphatically and enthusiastically as a person possibly can. He represents what I believe in and where I want to see this nation go. His vision of our future is the America I have been waiting for.

This time, as the results came in, I had no expectation of winning. Any real hope in that regard had been squelched by the last two elections. And yet as I watched state after state, including my own always-red state, turn blue on the map, this country's choice was clear. And there is no word strong enough for my elation.

We have risen to the occasion. It's a characteristic for which we were once known, but not a reputation we have earned in recent history. In the next four years, there will be many occasions for rising. Rising up, rising above. And with our joining of voices, and a leader whose faith in this nation has repeatedly brought me to tears, I believe we can.

Yes we can.

I'm strolling through the mall, gazing into the shops as I pass, the heels of my shoes clicking on the shiny floor tiles. I walk past an old man sitting alone at a table. A shaft of sunlight shines down from a window above, bathing him in brightness. It's as if he's sitting onstage in a spotlight, his shock of hair gleaming white. I give him a sideways glance as I pass. He looks up at me, but I avert my eyes. And then immediately I wonder why I avoided his gaze. He looks kind, and a bit lonely. Or maybe just bored.

I soon head back the way I came, and I decide that if the man is still sitting there, I will smile. Just to acknowledge him. After all, he is not anonymous, not an archetype, not The Old Man in a play. He is a person with a soul.

I soon see that he is still sitting at the table, still in the spotlight. He is looking down, his nose buried in a handkerchief. I doubt he will even look up, but when I walk by he raises his eyes to meet mine.

I smile, and he responds with a wink.

His timing is so impeccable, it seems we'd rehearsed it. As I walk on, my smile widens, and I suspect this exchange brightened my day even more than it did his.

When we arrive, an elderly man greets us at the door. He stands straight and speaks kindly. He tells us his wife is very sick and he didn't know what else to do. He thought about taking her to the hospital himself, he says, but she's too weak to walk and too sick to sit in the waiting room.

She is too ill even to talk to us. I ask for her birthdate, her social security number, her doctor's name. He answers the questions. He can tell me what she's eaten, when her last bowel movement was, when he gave her medications. I suggest he may want to bring her Medicare card along and he fetches her purse and knows right where to find it.

The one thing he can't tell me is what medicine she is allergic to. He knows there is one, but he can't recall the name right now. But he does not ask her. She has Alzheimer's, he tells me. I suspect that even when she isn't sick, he still takes care of her.

I ask him to show me her medications, and he leads me to the kitchen where he opens a cabinet door above the stove. The shelves are full of pill bottles. He scans the neat rows and chooses one bottle, then another, then a third. He hands them to me, saying, "These are all of hers, I think." He inspects the shelves again to be sure. "Yes, just these three. The rest are for my cancer."

Later in the evening I find I'm still thinking about this man and his wife, about "in sickness and in health." About what it means to grow old together.

I tell Rob about it, and I tear up a little when I get to the part where the man tells me, The rest are for my cancer. I say, shaking my head, "I am just now starting to see what it's like to be old."

And we are but only beginning to understand what it means to grow old together. The pain of illness, the ache of nostalgia. The blessing of waking to another day, just to struggle through it. The helplessness of watching one another deteriorate. The underlying understanding of where it's all headed.

I think back to my last glimpse of the elderly couple as I left her hospital room. He was standing by her bedside, talking to the nurses on her behalf. Answering questions. Expressing concerns. Advocating for her.

The fierce devotion. The inspiring patience. The strong alliance of a lifelong friendship. The loving touch of his wrinkled hand smoothing her white hair. Yes, we are but only beginning to understand what it means to grow old together.

My next post will include my general impressions of Venice, but here are some of my favorite things and moments from our time there...

Bells. There are lots of bell towers (many leaning) throughout the city, which means that pretty much wherever you are, you hear chiming round about the top of the hour. I say "round about" because it seemed to me that none of them were operating on quite the same time. So one bell melody would be followed five minutes later by another, farther in the distance. Lovely. And different from the bell tolls in London, which also permeate the city but ring with the singular authority of Big Ben.

Whenever I'm in a new place, I like to sleep with the window slightly open because I want to hear the sounds of the street. Our hotel was a stone's throw from St. Mark's Square, and waking in Venice to the chimes from St. Mark's Bell Tower was a definite bliss bit.

St. Mark's Bell Tower. We went to the top for a bird's-eye view of Venice. The bells began to ring while we were up there, and it was amazing. The melody starts with one bell and then another joins in and then another and another until all the bells in the tower are swinging heavily back and forth, their pendulums within arm's reach of those standing below. It was loud, but not unbearably so. There was no chance of speaking over them, and so the entire tower of people stood watching in silence, the vibrations reverberating through our bodies. And then the bells gradually ended their cadence one-by-one just as they had begun, each bell swinging less and less until its pendulum no longer struck its sides.

The Alps. They are within view from Venice. I had no idea. Flying in, we were over snow-covered mountains only moments before I saw the coast. And one clear morning in Venice, we saw the snowy peaks rising up in the distance, above the horizon of the city.

Dueling orchestras. I had read about these, and was determined to hear them. In an attempt to get business, a couple restaurants within St. Mark's Square each hire an orchestra to play at their outdoor tables. And each orchestra tries to outperform the other and win the affection of the crowd. There was a clear winner the night we were there, with people circled around and couples dancing. At one point they played "New York, New York" which felt oddly asynchronous to me. (Pictured below is the losing, but lovely, orchestra.)

Laundry on the line. Everywhere you look there's laundry hanging from the line, draped across window sills or stretching across alleys. This obviously isn't unique to Venice, but what I did notice here that I hadn't other places was the distinction of dark and light loads. We saw lines full of only dark clothing, or only light. And interestingly, it tended to apply to an entire area, not just one residence. We'd walk down a street with white shirts and sheets waving overhead, and Doreen would remark, "Today must be whites day."

Shutters. These are also not unique to Venice, but can I just say that I love having shutters that actually open and shut? Why do we attach ugly plastic fake shutters to the sides of our houses in the States? Throwing open solid wooden shutters is such a simple, but significant, joy.

Party in the plaza. There was a small enclosed plaza below our hotel window, and one night it was host to some sort of party. They had event tents set up, so I couldn't see anything, but we lay in bed and listened to the laughter for awhile. SO much laughter. Someone would speak loudly in Italian, telling an animated story I couldn't understand, and then everyone would erupt in laughter. It was so joyful and contagious, I might have even laughed myself.

Water taxi ride. We were given a free water taxi ride for reasons that aren't relevant and I'm not going to bother to explain. And IT WAS AWESOME. It was just the four of us and the driver, jetting down the canals of Venice. We had been on the waterways already, but we'd ridden in the public transport boats which are big and slow. The water taxi was fast, and could navigate the narrow canals. For me, this was one of the best moments of the trip. The drivers of these boats are so skilled, and it's amazing to watch them maneuver. And often they are going slowly enough that the motor isn't very loud, and so they all greet each other or yell curses if someone is in the way. It's like a floating street party. And when the driver cranked it up and darted us through the canals, it felt like we were in one of those Venice high-speed boat chases they always put in movies. Definite highlight.

Fresh market. I always hit up the fresh markets when I'm in a city, and Venice may have had the best one yet. There is a fish market and a fruit/vegetable market, and both are expansive and gorgeous. (Well, as much as a fish market can be gorgeous.) Doesn't hurt that it's situated right along the Grand Canal, either - I'd wager no fresh market in the world has a better location. And the fruit and vegetables were absolutely vibrant. We bought some strawberries, and I don't mean to overstate this point (and I was very hungry so perhaps my perspective is skewed), but I've never had such succulent strawberries. So red! We rinsed them under a nearby fountain spout and sat along the Grand Canal, our feet dangling over the water, as we ate them.

Evening plaza stroll. On our last evening, Rob and I took a stroll before dinner and he guided our route to a plaza I don't remember the name of that was filled with people. It was lined with restaurants and there were definitely plenty of tourists here, but there were also lots of locals. It was a long rectangular plaza, and we watched the activity around us as we slowly ambled through. Some young boys were chasing each other with water guns. Several people were carrying boxed pizzas home to their apartments. A young Italian man was introducing a young woman to an older couple, presumably his aunt and uncle or something similar. It was a fantastic snippet of local life.

Dining along the Grand Canal. Our first day in Venice, we lunched along the Grand Canal. And our last night in Venice, Rob and I ate dinner along the Canal as well. Food is pricier there, so we didn't do it often. But it was worthwhile to do a couple times. The hustle and bustle in Venice is on the water, and so it's entertaining just to watch the boats go by. Plus it's utterly picturesque. Every now and then I'd look around and realize, Holy shit. I'm in Venice. It's hard to be unhappy while sipping a glass of wine by the Grand Canal.

In my dream, he isn't there. I'm on a trip with friends, a trip that feels very much like an attempt at distraction, which isn't working since the only constant in my thoughts is his absence. In the daze of the dream, the reason for his absence isn't clear, although the pit in my stomach suggests it will be long, perhaps permanent.

I do my best to play along, to go through the motions, to act in the way that's expected of me. But despite being with dear friends, I am utterly, unbearably alone. Actually, it isn't the aloneness that's unbearable, it's being without him. I see dolphins, and wrapped up in the joy of the sight is the desire to share it with him. But he isn't there, and the realization that I can't even tell him about it makes the moment suddenly empty. Every joy is enhanced by - no, entwined with - his presence and participation, and without him each moment drains of color. Life loses its third dimension; everything is flat and meaningless. I am stumbling, aching, walking wounded. The pain is piercing and suffocating, and I want so desperately to go back. Let me go back! To where he is or when he was. Please let me go back.

I wake up. And there he is. Next to me. My eyes fill with tears as relief replaces grief. I slide against him, hold him in his sleep, and softly weep because it could have been, and still could be.

Then I sigh in gratitude, as I cling to him, for the gift of another day together.

It is 8:05 am. I'm walking to my office after a coffee run, bundled up and clutching my cup of joe. A man, younger than me, is coming toward me on the sidewalk. As we pass, I mumble a half-hello and simultaneously he exclaims in as exuberant a come-on voice as I've ever heard, "Hel-lo! Good morning, darlin'!" He is grinning shamelessly and his gaze follows me as we pass. I suspect he might be drunk.

Still - perhaps due to the gusto of his greeting, the liveliness of his licentiousness - I rather appreciate his warm regards.

As we're driving down the interstate, a Nirvana song comes on the radio.

"The kids entering high school now weren't even born when Kurt Cobain died," Rob says.

"Really?"

"Well, he died in 1994, right?"

"I think it was my freshman year. So, yeah."

"Fourteen years ago. Nearly half your lifetime."

"That's also when I met you, yo."

"Yup, nearly half your lifetime ago."

I think about who we were then. We're returning home from watching Juno, and so it's perhaps easier than usual to muster a memory of our teenage selves. We were a lot like them - good kids involved in band and sports and sharing a real relationship. We weren't part of the snooty popular crowd and had no desire to be. Somehow we even managed to avoid the typical teenage angst. My recollection of our high school years is of open mic night at the coffeehouse, hikes on warm spring days, and a sense of possibility in the air that was almost palpable. We were naive in so many ways, but we also knew ourselves well and recognized something in each other. I remember we used to long for the day when we'd be grown up and sharing a life together - when we could drive home, together, after a movie.

I look at us now, sitting in this car. Rob's hands are clasping the steering wheel and mine are clutching my suede gloves. Where we are now is what once felt so far away. And suddenly I see that we are undeniably adults. All the evidence is there - the marriage, the mortgage, the two-car garage. But when did it happen? Wasn't it just yesterday that I was writing RIP Kurt on my spiral green notebook, right next to the heart encircling Rob's name?

I gaze out the car window at the unending stretch of road. There are tiny travelers far ahead of us, marked by red, and ones behind us who are penlights of white. And I realize it's been happening all along, while we've been moving. I guess I thought there would be a sign or something, a crossing of state lines, a concrete destination that I would recognize upon arrival.

We pass a tractor trailer and as I watch the continuous roll of its wheels I'm surprised to find my eyes welling up with tears. I search myself for sadness, but there is none. I am just profoundly affected by this moment of realization, of the tangible truth in it. There are mileposts along the way, some more memorable than others, but growing up, and being, and living, is happening all along the way, constant and so gradual that it almost goes unnoticed.