An 89-year-old man at the retirement home got down on one knee and asked me to marry him

months after that I sat opposite a man who was spending every day trying to get somebody to listen to him about a grave, and I did not notice.

I was in that building eleven times between the May and the October. I thought I was listening. I was extremely proud of how well I listened.

And the thing I had been doing for five months was talking — about Pete, about the house, about the quiet — to a man who was far too polite to say that he had something he needed to raise.

He got down on one knee in front of forty people because it was the only way to get the floor.

An eighty-nine-year-old man had to propose marriage in a day room to be heard by a woman who was congratulating herself every Wednesday on being a good listener.

And the Wednesdays, which I have had