|  It
might come as a surprise. It might appear to be unreal. For
those of you that have no idea who I am, it might fail to
impress you at all. But the fact remains that as of July 23,
2005, I am going to get married.
For
the most part, I've come to terms with this now, and the surrealness
of the whole "having a fiance" thing is kind of
past. All the same, Alyssa's still beaming at her finger,
I'm still beaming at her, and as the saying goes, there's
a lot of love in the air.
The
engagement story ran something like this:
You
may get out your carpet squares now if you'd like!
I'd
come to the realization back around early June that I'd reached
a point in my life where everything, for the first time I
could recall in recent memory, was really stable and generally
things were good. But I was restless for some reason, and
even after many long exchanges with people like my longtime
friend and fellow footnote scribe Laura Redfern (who
is allegedly really "smart" and "insightful")
I wasn't able to nail down what seemed to be off in an otherwise
good state. Then, there was a wedding.
Specifically
it was the wedding of Alyssa's brother Scott and bride (obviously
now "wife") Christina. At some point, Alyssa's family
decided that they liked me, so I was around a lot for the
entire weekend of the wedding festivities. And it was at point
during this time of merriment that I suddenly knew I was
ready for this. There were no fanfares, no spiritual
guides giving me the thumbs up, there was just a warm sense
of calmness about the whole thing. Since one of the last things
that I feel in any kind of situation is "calm,"
I knew there was something to it.
So
I ramped up plans to make a proposal.
I
eventually settled on popping the question on her birthday--Alyssa
frequently lamented how her birthdays were usually lame, and
she'd given up on them. Since this was number 25 for her,
I had already been scheming (with a limited amount of success)
as to how to really make it special. So on top of what I had
cobbled together to make a couple days of celebration, I decided
to lay down the trump card, in this case an purchased from
The Diamond Cellar.
The
night of her birthday eve, we traveled down to Cincinnati
(which until several months ago had been her home of several
years) and saw a Wendy MacLeod play called The Water Children.
We stayed for the night at the absolutely beautiful Hilton
Netherland Plaza hotel in downtown Cincinnati, one of the
best cases you can make for Art Deco architecture. The following
morning we slept late, got up to breakfast, and then I took
advantage of what had turned out to be a clear (if amazingly
hot and humid) day and suggested that we go up to the observation
deck of the Carew Tower (the tallest building down there).
We had visited the observation deck on our first date in Cincinnati,
the same date that we kissed for the first time, so there
was a lot of resonance to the relationship there. We were
the first ones up there for the day. The sun was already beating
down, my heart rate was beating up, and I couldn't even tell
you what I said before I dropped down on one knee.
But
I do know that she said, "Yes, of course I
will."
|
