A Marriage Proposal

Friday, October 8 is a day that I had been planning for a while. I had met with both her mom and dad to ask them if they would give me their permission to ask Melissa to marry me. This girl loves surprises but she is impossibly hard to catch unaware. I thought for a long time about how exactly I would ask her to marry me. I knew that she loves to be the center of attention, that her family is highly important to her and that she loves creativity. I needed a plan.

Friday rolled around and Melissa and I were in the car and driving to her sister’s house where her mom just so ‘happened’ to decide to throw Melissa a party. We arrived in the driveway and I said to Melissa, “There seems to be a lot of cars here. I thought that your mom said she was going to throw you a small party with your family.” “Yeah” she remarked nonchalantly. We walked into the house and began chatting with her family and friends.

I nervously picked at the hamburger and pasta mixture on my plate as I thought ahead to what I was about to do. Time passed quickly that evening and before long Jen, Melissa’s sister and Megan, Melissa’s best friend, were ushering Melissa outside for a ‘special game.’ They blindfolded her and led her to the backyard where she was instructed to follow the yarn that had been previously strewn across the yard extending from a building to a fence to a post etc. She followed it until she came to her first birthday present. I can’t remember what it was. In fact I can hardly remember anything that she received that day while she blindly followed that red thread from gift to gift and card to card. As soon as she started her ‘special game’ I quickly ran around the front of the house to grab a special little item out of the car and then came back to where Melissa was trustingly traversing across the grass, guided by the red cord. She was almost finished. I now tightly grasped the end of the yarn that Megan handed to me as Melissa came closer and closer until finally she was touching my hands.

What happened next seemed to pass like a dream after waking. The sun had gone down and the light was dim. Off her blindfold came. I dropped to one knee and then silence. Though we were surrounded by family and friends for that moment they seemed to fade away. “Baby, I love you and I would like to spend the rest of my life with you.” I could feel the ring between my fingers as I said, “I would like to know if you would be willing to . . .” At that moment I revealed the ring which seemed to float between my fingers. I had no time to think. Instead the words that I had practiced in front of the mirror so many times before continued to form on my tongue: “I would like to know if you would be willing to let go of everything that you have ever known and embark on a grand new adventure, together. Melissa will you marry me?” Her eyes were sparkling as she . . . .

said “yes.”