1128

Today has been a wonderful day, and “wonderful” doesn’t even seem to begin to describe it. It began early this morning, rising at 7:30 to pick up Jessica and head up to Lake Lanier, where we met my coworker Art and his fiancee Lisa for a morning of sailing. I wasn’t expecting much, driving up the road. The trees seemed still and the wind forecast looked lousy. This wasn’t so good, as I wanted Jess’s first experience on a sailboat to be a good one.

When we arrived at the lake, however, we found that indeed it was windy, and were soon heeling our way out into the main channel. We sailed three hours, chatting and tacking, Art expertly manning the winches while I stuck by the tiller. The sky was crisp and blue, the sun shining, the breeze cool. We probably travelled further than I ever have in one session. We couldn’t have asked for a better day on the lake.

After lunch we made tracks for my house, eager to get cleaned up in preparation for our Lindy Hop class later that night. Two showers later (one each), I was sitting on my bed, flipping through the photographs from the day’s trip as Jess looked on when we came to a photograph of a ring in its open box, resting on my open hand. I feigned embarrassment and shut off my camera, pulling the actual ring from my camera bag and presenting it to her. To describe her reaction as “surprised” would be something of an understatement. We have been talking about marriage quite a bit, but she wasn’t expecting it at all, which was kind of the whole idea.

Holding the ring box open before her, I asked her to marry me (!) and she accepted (!!!) — “Of course!” — ignoring the ring for the moment (I think a few kisses were exchanged at this point. Maybe.) and then asking me to put it on her finger. Guys need some prodding from time to time. My fingers shaking, I managed to pry the ring out of its box and slide it onto her finger. We are engaged!

Over the next euphoric hour or two we called parents and basked in the glow of the ring. I figured she would like it (she loves it!), but I’m surprised by how much I like it! It’s so shiny and glittery — amazing. After years and years I now understand the mysterious attractive forces of diamonds. Or at least I’ve experienced it.

We went to our Lindy Hop lesson and had a ball, afterward heading to the ghetto and Six Feet Under, a wonderful seafood joint with a rooftop area that overlooks the Capitol and Oakland Cemetery. We watched the sun set from a corner table and shared the rest of the evening of wine, fried alligator and squid (that’s calamari to you sophisticates), and a delicious chicken fajita soup.

I couldn’t be more excited about my relationship with Jessica and our future together. Every day with her is better than the one before, and in a lot of ways I never imagined it could be this good. I always thought I might have to settle in some way, but with Jessica there’s no settling. She’s amazing. A keeper. And I’m going to keep her forever.

Posted: Sunday, September 18th, 2005 at 11:59 pm; Category: 1128, Sailing, Photograph; Comments feed: RSS 2.0.
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