Storytelling Sunday

On the first Sunday of the month Sian at From High in the Sky invites us to share our stories. Stop by & check them all out.

Tuesday was our 19th wedding anniversary so this month I am going to tell the story of our engagement.

It has everything – romance, high drama, humor, and a cliffhanger!

No murders, but it was a close run thing on that score.

So, way back in early 1993 DH & I were living together in a small one bedroom apartment. I was working in the mortgage business during the great refi boom of the early 90’s and DH was finishing up his IT education. We’d been dating for nearly 4 years at this point and we were not getting married.

We were specifically not getting married, not just not getting married in the way most people who are dating are not currently getting married.

We’d talked about it early in our relationship & we both agreed there was no point in getting married. It was perfectly possible to be in an exclusive committed relationship without a piece of paper affirming that that was in fact what we were doing. We just didn’t see any need for the piece of paper.

We both agreed about that.

No point in getting married.

Now, DH was very busy in early 1993. He was talking a full course load; he was tutoring; he was working part time at a bookstore; he was studying for finals and he was starting going on job interviews.

He was stressed and felt out of control. His response to this was “I know! I’ll propose to Stacey!”

All very well and good as far as that goes, but you see this brilliant idea occurred to him about 2am one night.

Rather than doing the sensible thing (sensible for someone who had been living with yours truly for nearly 2 years at this point) and waiting until morning to act on his idea, he woke me up out of a sound sleep to propose.

This is where the murder nearly occurred.

I do not respond well to being awakened at 2am unless the house is on fire & even then it’s sort of iffy.

I groggily & grumpily said something along the lines of “What? Huh? Do what? Honey you need to ask me again in the morning if you are really serious about this.”

Because we’d agreed about the not getting married thing, and I knew he was stressed out and suspected he was just reacting to that and once he’d gotten some sleep he’d feel differently. And I was half asleep & not glad to be half awake.

So DH went back to studying, somewhat hurt but not really surprised given that it was 2am and he hadn’t actually thought about that fact before waking me up.

My alarm went off at 7am and he rolled over and said “I do still want to marry you.”

This time I said yes.

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