In their Oakland Beach bungalow, above the sofa where Pam Brightman and Essjay Foulkrod sit, hangs a print. It’s titled “Confidences,” by Harry Wilson Watrous (1857-1940). On the frame is a little gold plaque bearing the inscription: “A little talk there was of me and thee … ” from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

Pam had bought the print before meeting Essjay, but she says it reflected her hopes of finding a relationship that would be “better, different and lasting.”

Pam and Essjay were married at the Unitarian Memorial Church in Fairhaven, Mass., in May 2007. “We really wanted to wait until it became legal in Rhode Island,” says Pam, “but we weren’t getting any younger.”

“Pam said, ‘Why don’t we before they take it away!’

“I didn’t care so much about marriage,” says Essjay. “I had been married twice and divorced twice. I didn’t need that to feel connected forever to the partner of my choice. For me it was our commitment ceremony in August 2005 that really mattered.”

Their commitment ceremony featured a “handfasting,” a Neopagan ritual in which the couple’s hands are wrapped together with a cloth or ribbon.

“The ribbon is tied into a lovers’ knot and then you slip out of the wrapping without untying it. You have been bound to each other and then released, free to be yourself,” says Essjay.

“Handfasting is like ‘jumping the broom,’ ” says Pam, which they also did at that ceremony. That custom is said to be rooted in the African-American tradition during slavery when blacks were not allowed to legally marry.

Pam, now 57, and Essjay, 83, found each other late in life.

They met when Essjay was invited to speak at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of South County, in South Kingstown, where Pam was a member. Essjay, a leader in the lesbian community, was active in the Westminster Unitarian Universalist Church in East Greenwich.

“You then came to visit Westminster,” says Essjay, “and the next thing I knew you were coming more and more often.”

“We started going on nature walks together,”says Pam.

“I told Pam I was just looking for a buddy, a companion.”

“And, for a while, that’s what I thought, too. Then I started to have strong feelings for Essjay. It wasn’t ‘life partner’ at first — not until you talked it over with all your friends and your children and they told you to go for it.”

“Well, it is a generation of age difference between us — Pam is only two years older than my oldest daughter. You didn’t need another mom and I certainly didn’t want to be ‘mom’ again.”

“It feels so good to be married even if it isn’t recognized here,” says Pam. “It’s icing on the cake to what was already a strong commitment.”

Pam recalls the first time they went hiking. When faced with the long path or the short path, Essjay said she couldn’t walk so far. “ ‘We’ll take the short path then,’ I said. We walked for hours and hours — turns out we were on the long path all along. And it led us right down the aisle.”

cgrosch@projo.com