A year ago today, B and I got engaged. Six months later (to the day), we were married. It's been quite a year.
A year ago today was a Friday. I worked at home due to an impending snowstorm--in hindsight, it was an unexpected storm, but the winter was so mild that a late-season storm wasn't the bother that it would be this year. Our one-month-prior return from the land of pixie dust helped ease the arrival of the powdery white stuff.
It had been a good winter, our first in our new condo. That winter, we painted our bedroom without getting into a single fight--we considered the venture a success because all prior occasions featuring a paintbrush had dissolved into open critiques of technique, followed by angry silence and sloppy painting (don't look too carefully at our downstairs bathroom the next time you are over).
That winter, we purchased furniture that had not been owned by anyone else. We put a brand-new bedroom set in our brand-new bedroom, and we added a couple of armless leather chairs to our living room (and I am in fact sitting on one right now--definitely a worthwhile purchase). Our house was becoming our home.
A year ago today, B picked up my engagement ring from our jeweler. Unknown to me, he made reservations at a swank restaurant in a nearby town, only to receive news late in the day that they were closing early due to the storm--sorry for the inconvenience.
Unknown to B, I started making dinner after he left work. We later called it the engagement pizza, and I ate the leftovers at work the following Monday--luckily, neither of us thought to freeze them and eat them today. He was so relieved to walk in the door and find dinner already prepared--it was one less task to figure out that evening.
I cleaned up after dinner, and he disappeared and then called me upstairs. A trail of candles led me to the bedroom, where he had left a small book on our new bureau for me to read. The book was full of ticket stubs and match books and cards from places we had visited, movies and shows we had seen, and restaurants at which we had eaten. Each page had a little story about our adventures together.
The last page of the book had an envelope with two tickets that B had made, and the show was called, "Will you marry me?" B emerged from his hiding space (the bathroom) and offered a smile, a ring, and a bended knee. I'm pretty sure I said yes, but I don't think there was a question in either of our minds at that point.
A year ago today, I had already (secretly) started planning a honeymoon--but to Nova Scotia. B wanted to go to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. How did we end up going to Paris and Nice, you might ask. All I can say is that it popped into my head one day and wouldn't go away, and that's how I knew that it was the right place to go. It was kind of like when B and I realized, after two years of knowing each other, that we each existed. We got into each other's heads and stayed there, and that's how we knew.
It's been quite a year, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
