Chapter 9: The Proposal
Will and I had been talking about
marriage since he moved to Atlanta, and I could hardly wait to be married to
him. He was someone who liked to weigh
every decision and do it right, and while patience was not my strong suit, I
was willing to ride it out until the time came along. My first marriage did not include a
proposal; it was endless discussions about whether we “should” get married,
and then a quick trip to the jewelry store to sign the financing
paperwork. This time, there would be
love and certainty, and I knew it would be wonderful.
I didn’t want to anticipate when it
might happen, only to overbuild the moment and risk disappointment if I had
guessed the timing incorrectly. A good
friend of mine had experienced this recently, when she was sure that her
boyfriend would propose on the Caribbean cruise they had taken, and let her
ire be known when a ring didn’t appear on the last night, only to discover a
beautiful setup back at their house when they arrived back home. They laughed about it, and she felt sheepish
for reading him the riot act as he patiently weathered the storm of her wrath.
So I asked Will to plan a weekend away for us, a vacation from the pressures of work and time to re-connect. The weekends he had planned while he lived in Phoenix were spectacular; it had always been my dream to have a man in my life who wanted to plan surprise vacations.
Will chose Savannah, but of course
he doesn’t tell me until we were almost there on the six-hour drive. As we drive East on I-85, I guess Charleston,
Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head, and Jacksonville.
All I get for my effort is a raised eyebrow.
Dinner is happy and festive. Will orders the six-course chef’s menu and I
go for something a little less adventurous.
In our travels, I have noticed that Will asks the servers on a regular
basis: “What do you think is good?
Surprise me.” We sip gin and
tonics with lots of lime, and don’t skip dessert… that would be criminal.
We take our time walking back to our
inn, stopping at several of Savannah’s famous squares along the way. At Wright Square, Will looks up at the center
statue and stops to take me into his arms.
The half-moon is shining down at us, and the trees make shadows that
look more enveloping than sinister, even here in the domain of the Garden of
Good and Evil. He hugs me fiercely, and
then pulls back and takes both of my hands in his. He is talking about his
grandfather, and how much he loves me, and the next thing I hear is…
“… and I want to ask you to be my
bride.”
We sit together on the bench and bask quietly in the moonlight, soaking in the moment.
Back in our room, we are smiling from ear to ear and turn on ESPN… it is March Madness, after all, and our shared love of sports is one of the things we enjoy so much together. Intertwined happily watching basketball, I say to him, “I wish I had recorded everything you had said to me in the square. I want to remember every word.”
He says, “I thought about that…” and
pulls a small envelope from his suitcase.
I carefully tear open the flap, and written on a small notecard is
every word of his proposal. He had
memorized what he wanted to say, a few beautiful paragraphs, and wrote it down so that I could keep
it. I am awestruck.
He really had thought of everything.
I ask him how he had picked this
particular ring, and he says that when he was looking at settings, he had two
set aside: one a square setting similar to what I had pointed out to him, and this antique-style round bezel
setting. He couldn’t decide, and he
went home to think about it. He says
that the one that kept appearing at the forefront of his mind was the round
one. He purchased it and took it home,
leaving the little cushioned box open on his desk all day while I was traveling one week, and he remembers he could not stop smiling, thinking about me wearing it.
THIS is what it feels like to be
loved. THIS is what it feels like for
the man you love to ask you to marry him.
For real this time.
I love him so much that I wonder how I ever could have mistaken the
other for the real thing, when in fact it was a shadow of hope for what I have
now.
