The Love Story: On Proposing

Before Rick arrived, I woke up giddy. Rick was coming. On a Sunday morning. I had more than a sneaking suspicion that I was going to get proposed to, that I was going to hear those words I had always dreamed someone someday would say to me: will you marry me. But even then it did not seem possible or likely. While I bopped around my bathroom getting ready, I looked at myself in the mirror and audibly spoke to my reflection, "Kelly Marie, you are not getting proposed to today." But then I went ahead and painted my fingernails just in case.

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It was after 10:00 on Saturday night, and Rick still had not called. He always called. Why hadn't he called? I texted his cousin Megan, and she said Rick was not home, that she did not know where he was, but that her brother Jon knew. I called Jon who refused to say. Finally Rick called, much later than usual. He had been out at my parents' talking to my dad asking for permission to marry me. After a three-hour conversation that I can only imagine as grueling, my dad gave Rick his blessing. "Really?" I asked and silently cried out of joy. "I'm coming to see you tomorrow," he said. 

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There he was standing on my doorstep, a baseball cap over uncombed hair, his suit for church on a hanger in his hand. "I'm too impatient for this," he said putting everything down. He knelt on the carpet and pulled a ring out of his pocket. There was no box, there were no flowers, no big prepared speech, just him asking: "Will you marry me?" 

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After calling our parents, siblings, and closest friends (which took hours), we ended our evening by turning off our phones and settling on the couch to eat Captain Crunch while watching Up. Like everything with Rick, it was simple and straightforward; the world's least glamorous proposal. But in retrospect, it was the simple, "unglamorous" proposal I needed, just as how I have needed the simple life with Rick all along.