This morning, I woke up early to work on an article for the magazine I edit. It’s one of those 2,000 word pieces that just makes you want to rip your hair out. So I got up at 6 and transcribed one last interview to add to the story. No biggie.
But it’s highly unusual for me to be up that early, to say nothing of up before my darling future husband. Now bear in mind I’ve been calling him that for two years, and had even got as far as setting a date last summer for, oh, six weeks from now. But it didn’t pan out, and so I remained quasi, semi, unofficially engaged (QSUE).
There’s been all this talk in the house about a ring his grandfather gave him, but somehow it had gotten misplaced. The joke was that Grandfather was telling DFH that it wasn’t time yet, and when it was time, he’d let DFH know.
So I’ve been QSUE for quite some time. Special events came and went without so much as a hint of a breath of a possible proposal. Talk about marriage? Sure. But proposal? Nah. Not unless it was me ribbing him.
In the past month or so, DFH has been very agreeable to getting married–as long as it’s after 7 p.m. And, of course, there’s the house, which has continued apace; we’re still on track to close on April 26. Lots of good things going on, buoying us. Things like finding out the neighbors–in that antebellum estate house that preserves our spectacular view–also go to the Episcopal church in town, which has also recently started an EFM program. I might finally have a church home within walking distance.
So this morning, as the sun was coming up, I noted wryly that I was the one to wake DFH up–usually he wakes me up. There’s a weird energy afoot lately, one that’s carrying us through this home purchase and through some trying times with work and family. It’s positive. And, I note, it’s almost spring, as I’m jumping onto the bed with his usual refrain of, “Up, up, baby!” He’s muttering; I’m laughing. Everything is backwards.
He gets up, and, as often is the case before he wakes up fully, starts colliding with things. He usually curses at the offending thing-in-the-way and moves on–we’re a bit cramped here in the Medford Pit. But this time, he managed to upset a basket we have hanging from the ceiling and dump all its contents onto his head and the bed below, like a pinata burst at a party.
I’m cooing reassurances like I always do when I suspect his temper is about to flare up at some unsuspecting object. But he’s going through the contents of the basket, his eyes lit up as if he were a five-year-old having just scored the winning shot and vehement that he’s going to have all the candy. He picks up a pouch, and says, “Do you know what this is? Do you know what this is?“
He tilts out the contents, as he calls it, a crow’s cache of shiny things rattling into his palm. He holds up a glittering gold thing, tipped in light, and says, presenting it to me, just as I realize that we have secured DFH’s late grandfather’s blessing from beyond–smacking him upside the head with it, as it were.
“Will you marry me?”
I fall over full of kisses, saying, I think, yes, yes, yes.
We’re going setting-shopping tomorrow.
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