As You Like It: Will You Marry Me?

A couple of weeks ago I was at the Department of Education in Malden doing a STAR reading training when I heard my phone ring. I checked to see who was calling, since I was expecting a call from my assistant telling me that my GED school was on fire. Thankfully, it turned out to be from Steve, so I waited until break time to see what it said. And there was the most unexpected message:

“Dan just phoned to ask our blessing so he could ask Mariel to marry him this weekend.”

I gave a little yip and almost dropped the phone. Everyone began asking me what happened. I answered, a bit dazed, “My daughter’s about to get engaged.”

Engaged? My baby? How was that possible? True, she and Dan have been going out for almost seven years so you couldn’t say that they were rushing into things, but she’s only 24. Twenty-four! Then I realized that when I was 24 I had already been married for three years and widowed for one, so perhaps 24 wasn’t so young after all. But still, my baby?

I got home that evening and began interrogating Steve.

“Tell me, tell me everything!” I demanded. “Every last detail!”

“There isn’t much to tell,” he insisted. “He called me to ask our blessing and said that he was going to ask her this weekend when they went on their hiking trip.”

“There must be details!” I wailed. And then I realized that Dan was an engineer just like Steve and so there probably weren’t any details and wouldn’t be any even if I held their feet to the fire. But then Steve added one: “Make sure you don’t say anything to Mariel because it’s going to be a surprise.”

Oy. I had to sit on this knowledge and not say a word. It was a good thing that they were leaving the next day so that I wouldn’t have to keep my big mouth shut for too long. I was making dinner when Mariel came home, excited about the trip. They were driving to New Hampshire’s White Mountains to hike the Appalachian Trail. They would also be camping on the trail at night. To me it sounded completely crazy, but I have never been the rugged type. When Shatz and I went camping we settled in at Kampground of America (KOA) sites where civilized showers and electricity were available. We weren’t exactly pioneers.

When Dan arrived later that evening I gave him a long hug. He looked happy yet nervous that I would let something slip and ruin his plans. But I was good. I kept relatively quiet — except for when I said goodnight to Mariel and kept babbling about how wonderful I knew the trip would be. Steve gave me a warning look so I shut up and kissed her goodnight.

Mariel and Lisa have always left us their itineraries when they’re off exploring — airplane schedules, hotel addresses, things I can understand — but this time Mariel left us a map of the trail, complete with compass points and markings of the mountain that they would be hiking. I had to laugh. It made as much sense to me as Egyptian hieroglyphics did before the Rosetta stone. She also warned us that there was no cell phone reception in the White Mountains so we probably wouldn’t hear from her that weekend.

That evening I realized that Steve had also proposed to me on a camping trip, and the symmetry of it appealed to me. Then he had the nerve to say, “How do you know she’ll accept?” I nearly decked him.

“Don’t say things like that! It’s not romantic! Why would she turn him down for heaven’s sake?” Engineers — harrumph!

Mariel called the next night. When I heard her excited voice I knew that, despite her father’s predictions, she had accepted Dan’s proposal. It seems that the first day on the mountain had been cold and miserable, but once they were up there was no turning back, so they suffered through the night. The next day Dan proposed on the mountain, giving her a lovely sapphire ring because he knew how much the geologist he loved hated diamonds.

She also told us that Dan had bought a geological favorite of hers — a bright yellow sulphur rock — and planted it on the trail for her to find. When she saw it, however, she thought it was plastic because she knew that sulphur wasn’t indigenous to the White Mountains. When she began questioning it, Dan gave up that plan and simply asked her to marry him.

They spent the night in a lovely inn and celebrated being together. I guess engineers do have some romantic bones in their bodies.

“It turns out everyone knew but me!” Mariel told us later. “He asked Lisa for advice on how to ask me — she wisely said, ‘Anything to do with rocks!’ — and told his parents and you. I was the only one who didn’t know.”

We’ve joked that in order to feel more settled, they should get an apartment in Iowa since Dan works in Connecticut and Mariel attends school in Arizona. But they’re not worried. They’ve heard the story too many times of how I lived in Israel and Steve lived in Boston and yet we ended up together. They’ll be their own rock, the foundation that they will build the rest of their lives on.

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Posted by Joan Florek Schottenfeld on Nov 16 2011. Filed under As You Like It, Featured Content, Opinion. Both comments and pings are currently closed.