Our Love Story

Like Father, Like…Fiancé?

1 Comment

A month or two after Steve and I got engaged, I had lunch with a friend and former colleague, Thomas. Thomas and I go back almost fifteen years, having met the day I started my first full-time faculty position. He and I had both joined the Language and Literature department of a small state university in Georgia in the fall of 2000, I as an assistant professor fresh out of grad school, he as the new department head established in his academic career. He became a valued mentor as we bonded over our shared status as newbies to the college. We’d left Georgia at the same time, as well, when he and his wife Anne Marie moved to Switzerland, where he’d accepted a professorship, the year I moved to Virginia.

We’ve stayed in touch and have found opportunities for the occasional reunion, the last a family holiday gathering in 2011. When Thomas emailed he would be stateside and passing through my stomping grounds in June, I made plans to meet him. Over sandwiches at Panera, he caught me up on his new book and Anne Marie’s library and translation work, and I filled him in on my memoir-in-progress and my engagement to Steve.

Then, Thomas asked me a really interesting question.

“So,” he said, setting his cup on the table and peering at me through wire-rimmed glasses. “I have to ask. After all these years, how did you know?”

“That’s Steve’s the one?” I said. Thomas nodded.

The cynic in me was tempted to reply, because he asked, and no one else ever did. But that wasn’t entirely true, and it wasn’t the real answer to the question, anyway. “Well,” I said. “I guess the first thing that comes to mind is—because of how he treats me. He’s a genuinely good man, and he’s good to me, and it’s…well, it’s easy.”

Thomas gave a nod of recognition and smiled.

“It’s funny,” I continued, “because all these years, people have been telling me things like, when it’s the right one, you’ll know. It will be easy. And I would sort of nod along, yeah, sure.” I sipped my tea. “But I think that’s true. It is easy. Not in the sense that there aren’t complexities. But there is a sense of ease, of rightness. There’s an effortlessness to being together.”

2012 July 112

My dad Garry, professor turned beekeeper

Thomas nodded more vigorously and said, “Yes. Yes, that’s good.”

“And then there’s this other piece that’s going to sound kind of weird,” I said. “Sometimes it seems a little weird to me, anyway.”

Thomas raised his eyebrows.

“Well,” I said, “Steve is the man most like my father of any man I’ve ever dated.”

At that, Thomas burst out laughing. But he kept nodding.

Continue reading →

Will YouTube Marry Me?

2 Comments

Everyone’s first question, as soon as you sport a ring on your finger, is “How did he propose?”  The available answers seem to grow increasingly complex: a quick internet search reveals choreographed dance routines with professional performers, day-long scavenger hunts where the couple’s friends pop up with clues, private rooftop dinners accompanied by string quartets or even salsa bands. Websites abound offering guidance on creating the “perfect proposal,” and there are event planners whose sole focus is designing not weddings but “proposal packages.” The “Plan Your Proposal” button on one such site leads to a menu that not only strongly encourages hiring a pro to document the event but also includes a “Book a Flash Mob” link and an “Ask the Expert” option, where you can “run your proposal ideas” past a “proposal expert” and get a response in three days.

Um, how exactly does one qualify to become a “proposal expert”?

Bold public proposals or creative, extravagant approaches are genuinely romantic when they fit the couple. My brother proposed to my sister-in-law in front of a crowd packed with friends and members of an organization that had changed his life; they were the very people who’d encouraged him to live large and dare initiate the relationship in the first place. ❤ And if you’re a professional actor wooing a producer, it makes sense to stage an actual live lip-dub street production to pop the question! But so many “big” proposals seem less an outgrowth of a couple’s personal history than a product of growing social and market pressures to manufacture a “perfect” but artificial moment. After all, most of us aren’t professional performers, and how dreamy is it, really, to purchase someone else’s pre-packaged idea of a romantic gesture, or, for that matter, to tell not only your friends but also a roomful of random flash-mob dancers that you want to marry Susie before you tell Susie herself?

Somewhere along the way, proposing marriage has become a kind of competitive spectator sport. The big proposal now rivals the big wedding. Full of flash and splash, scripted and staged, it’s a public performance of your commitment, recorded for posterity. Because, of course, someone is always there filming these über-events.  Otherwise, what’s the point?

Continue reading →

Image

The Proposal

9 Comments

The last thing I expected was that the proposal would take me by surprise.

For one thing, Steve and I had already spent an afternoon looking at rings online; he’d waited until he thought I was distracted and tapped the name of the style I liked (not so) surreptitiously into his phone. More importantly, Steve, who teaches GIS mapping in forestry, is a self-described “map guy” and “math man.” While it’s true that stats are less straightforward than they seem and a few rogue numbers can even be irrational, Steve possesses all the qualities you might imagine of someone whose life is guided by algorithms and accuracy adjustments: he is solid and stable, a planner, practical, somewhat predictable. I love these things about him, as they balance out my more, shall we say, whimsical approach to the world. Since he’s also a conventional romantic—opening doors for me, spoiling me with good wine and sweet back rubs, sending flowers “just because”—l expected a traditional proposal. He’d tell me to get dressed up for an evening out at the restaurant where we first met, or suggest we go on a spectacular hike on an anniversary. And I, the storyspinner, would know what to expect, since it’s the rare plot twist I don’t discern before the big reveal, the rare tale where I don’t see the ending coming.

Or, in this case, the beginning.

Continue reading →

Image

Kiss Me, Karma

5 Comments

One year from today, lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I will don a wedding dress, pick up a bouquet, and walk down the aisle to marry my mid-life love Steve. Those last few stately steps will total just a few yards, but it’s taken me nigh onto forty-five years to stroll, saunter, sprint, and sweat my way to that moment.

I figure it’s my own fault. And not just because of a few questionable decisions made and frequent detours taken along the way, though those have certainly played a role. No, when I was young and particularly dumb, I inadvertently threw the universe a karmic challenge. And the universe, I think, felt it had no choice but to teach me a lesson.

The summer I was eighteen, I worked part-time as a student assistant in the Math and Science division of Gainesville College, then a two-year community college located in northeast Georgia. My father Garry had taught chemistry there since the year before I was born, so I’d grown up conducting science fair projects in his lab and selling Girl Scout cookies to his colleagues. Even before I enrolled as a student for my freshman year, I’d become acquainted with many of the department professors: the married Mayhews, environmental biologists always dressed in Birks and khakis; the mustached John Hamilton, an A&P prof who seemed to burst with kinetic energy; lab coordinator Linda B., whose bold laugh echoed down the terrazzo-floored halls. Once I started working in the division office, I got to know more about them: mathematician Dee Fuller always had a joke at the ready, and ex-Marine Dr. Rogers, geologist, department chair, and dead ringer for Ernest Hemingway, could shift from stern to smiling so quickly you thought you’d imagined feeling intimidated.

I particularly admired Christy Gregory, a tall, willowy math professor who’d painted her office bookshelves periwinkle. A color aficionado myself, I appreciated the pop of purple and the streak of independence it implied. Still, she puzzled me: obviously smart, beautiful, friendly, and genuine, Professor Gregory remained single. For my romance-obsessed teenage self, that equation was harder to understand than any that required solving for X.

Then, one afternoon, not long after she’d celebrated her fortieth birthday with a cake and cards from the staff, I was tending the front office phone while several faculty members chatted by the counter. Professor Gregory came in wearing a million-watt smile. After dropping off a handout for me to copy, she turned to announce she was engaged: she’d been active with the singles group at the local Methodist church, and she and the pastor had fallen in love. She was getting married!

I’d like to say I felt pure joy, that the only thought in my mind and thrill in my heart was for her happiness. But as my mouth smiled and said “Congratulations!” my brain was seized by that naïve self-absorption that is the special purview of the young. Oh, my god! it exclaimed in horror. I hope I don’t have to wait until I’m forty.

And as hugs were passed all around, the universe nodded sagely: Hey, kid, no problem. Happy to make alternate arrangements.