The Question

This morning my alarm clock went off at the usual half-past-early, I stumbled to the shower, them stumbled back to the bed to make sure my wife was awake. She asked me “Do you remember what today is?”

Now, this is NEVER a good question. It’s especially not a good question when I’m only half-awake, have yet to have my first (let alone second) cup of strong black coffee, and as-yet have no idea what the DATE is and only a sneaking suspicion of what day of the week it is. Still, I knew I had only seconds to come up with an answer of some sort, so I replied “Oh, happy anniversary!” Now I know full-well it wasn’t our wedding anniversary, but I knew it had to be the anniversary of SOMETHING or she wouldn’t have asked. All the while I’m thinking furiously, then it hits me, her father’s birthday was the other day. It was the anniversary of the day I proposed to her!

Yes, eight years ago my wife did me the honor of agreeing to marry me. This is a story worth telling. I’d picked out the ring without her knowing about it (although I was sure she suspected). I was going to take her to a nice place for dinner on Saturday evening and ask her there. She suspected something was up when I started talking about Saturday plans on Tuesday (I have trouble keeping secrets), but all was going according to plan. Until she told me that her mother called, and we were invited to a birthday dinner for her father on Saturday. Of course I agreed to go (with my stomach clenched the whole time) and she began to wonder if she was mistaken about getting engaged on Saturday. I began to go over my options. I was going to pick up the ring Saturday morning. I could wait until the following weekend, but I’d NEVER hold out that long. I could propose to her at her father’s party, but I’m not that brave. I decided to keep it simple, pick up the ring, pick up a dozen roses from the florist near her apartment (where I got her roses regularly anyway, so she wouldn’t suspect), then give her the ring and pop the question. Then we could announce our intentions at the party (assuming of course that she said "Yes").

So early Saturday morning I went to Luddies Jewelry on Staten Island, plunked down the rest of my money and saw the completed ring for the first time. Luddie (a retired cop I’d known for some time who became a jeweler) gave me a little box with a light in it for the ring (we still call that the little refridgerator), then asked me how I intended to give it to her. I replied that I was going to get a dozen roses and ask her, to which he replied that he had just the thing I needed. He handed me a plastic rose that opened up to hold a ring, perfect! So I put the ring in the rose, then stopped at the florist on the way to her apartment, putting the plastic rose into bouquet. She didn’t think anything of it when I gave her the flowers, like I said I did that fairly often. As she was trimming the stems she came to the fake rose and picked it up, remarking that it looked different, at which point I opened the top, got down on one knee and asked her to marry me.

By the way, she said yes.