Next to Each Other

I spotted this couple on a walk through the Palace of Fine Arts a few Mondays ago.  These two were even more inspiring than the surrounding architecture.  The husband was reading the newspaper, the wife was working on a crossword puzzle (or so I surmised).  It was as if they were in their own little world and the hands of time decided to stop long enough for them to enjoy the passing afternoon.  It was just him and her.  No one else.  They didn't look up once at the people walking by their bench.  They sat under the bountiful shade of those tall trees, content and assured of the very thing that so many of us seek: a romantic love that lasts a lifetime.  I found the corners of my mouth curling upward into a smile as I watched them.  In the moments that followed, I discovered how much of my own existence ached for a newspaper-reading partner.  Someone to sit by me from now until our departure into forever.  

I hope a few decades down the road, I will be that seventy-year-old woman sitting next to her husband in the park on a quiet Monday afternoon, working on the daily crossword puzzle and only looking up to catch him slowly turning the pages of his newspaper.