Choose your setting for celebration. Break rooms. Hallways. The tiny apartments we gathered in for grad school fetes. Decks with mosquitoes buzzing. Kitchens. When we married, we said our vows in the front yard’s patchy grass, danced in the back where the land slopes slightly toward the river. With a handful of Hershey’s kisses and a few rolls of streamers, we turn the Free Minds classroom into a holiday space. Kitchens, again. Asphalt parking lots with the car doors open for music. Restaurant back rooms. And last night, at the old school gym, they rolled out a red carpet. This is not a metaphor. A red carpet unfurled to the door, lined with candles. We walked it, piled our jackets on a back press. We watched the band play under a rack of medicine balls. Colored lights spun.

February 5, 2015