alison millar

This will be pretty obvious to a lot of people.

Alison Millar is my wife; also my muse, my reason for being, my life-accelerant, my compass, the mother of my children, my dreams, and my sun and moon among other things. And the story of our meeting is often told and fairly well-known among family and friends (check out aldus dreams).

Basically, we met in a *very* out of the way cyber-cafe in Antigua, Guatemala, and kept in touch on email until either fate or our own efforts brought us back together for a week of camping in the virginia woods.

What's less well known is the sub-script.

Years back, when I was working for an investment bank in New Jersey (it was close to New York, come on...), my banker buddy, Paul Hanson, and I were out drinking after work one night (rather, one morning ... late nights back in those days) and we were trying to figure out what summed up the perfect woman. A tough thing to do when you're in your early-20s, have no life, and still think your shit doesn't stink ... but that night, that was our charge.

What we came up with after many napkins and much deliberation was this: the perfect woman would be willing to go snow camping. Now hear me out on this. Our sense of it was, snow camping would be so miserable (neither of us had ever done it) that just the willingness to *try it* would be enough to tilt the scales.

Fast forward to me in Boston, post-Central America, pre-camping trip in Virginia. Alison and I are emailing regularly, talking less-regularly, flirting with each other and the idea of each other. And I get an email from the lady saying that she's going to be incommunicado for a few days because she's going snow camping with her dad in Yosemite!

I just about fell off my chair. In fact, I think I may have fallen off my chair. She was, literally, the first person I'd ever really known who'd been snow camping and she was going back for more! I mean, come on now. That's a little ridiculous.

So ... after I was finished freaking out ... I picked up my guitar and wrote Alison Millar. It didn't take long. Neither did my solicitation for a visit; my proclamation of undying and unyielding love; or my at-least internal faith that I would someday ask her to marry me.

Which happened August 2, 2003.

- lyrics -