One Giant Leap ...

Anyone that knows me would tell you that I’m pretty spontaneous. It’s partly because I like adventure and prefer to live in the moment, but I also dislike stress. I try to avoid confrontation and would rather just go with the flow. Why bother to make plans, set your alarm, force yourself to adhere to a schedule and constantly live under pressure?

One of the things that I love about Heather is that she lives life the same way. Some of the most memorable times that we’ve spent together have been completely spur-of-the-moment. Even when we make plans, we have a tendency of preparing at the last moment and completely winging it … and it always works out in the end. Yes, it doesn’t always minimize our stress levels, but it keeps our lives exciting.

It’s true that I wanted to propose to Heather in a memorable and special way, but I really wanted it to just happen. I didn’t want to get completely stressed out about it and turn it into a huge production.

I had secretly bought the ring in early August, but had to wait awhile for an opportune moment. The way I saw it, I had three possible proposal options during September and October:

1. At the Animal Underground Concert at TT the Bear’s – would be fun because of her love of music … but would cause a scene.
   
2. On Her Birthday – would be really cool because she was upset about turning 31 … but I had no idea of our plans for the day.
   
3. During Our Vacation in Iceland – would be really memorable and add to our wonderful trip. But, this would be hard to plan with no way for me to scope out locations.
   

I decided that the concert would be a little much, so I considered the other two options. In either case, I would need to come up with a proposal idea that was pretty flexible. No way to plan a fighter jet flyover or post our names on the Fenway Park scoreboard. I didn’t know exactly when or where this would happen.

In talking to friends, I decided that I should write her a poem and recite it whenever the moment was right. This would be very flexible and romantic, especially considering that Heather had been asking me to write her something for awhile.

However, if I was going to propose on her birthday, I at least had to find a special place to do it. Heather loves animals and we had previously discussed how she had never been on a whale watch. I thought that this was a solid option for birthday plans, especially because the shore could be a great proposal location.

I decided that she would love the random whale watch trip, and knew that the day would be great with or without the proposal. I decided that if it didn’t happen on her birthday, I always had Iceland … or anywhere else for that matter. I could read her my poem anywhere!

Earlier in the week, it looked as if it was going to rain on her birthday. And then, we made plans to meet up with friends later on that night. If the weather did turn out alright, it still was going to be a close call to meet up with her friends for dinner in Boston.

Actually, I knew deep down that the time crunch wasn’t an issue. After all, dinner can wait if I was asking Heather to marry me. The weather was the only question mark, and by the day before, the forecast was for nothing but sunshine.

(However, not really believing that it was going to happen helped me sleep like a baby the night before. Why worry about something that might not even happen?)

Needless to say, when I woke up that morning, the sun was shining and I knew that it would be the day. Heather had been really depressed about turning another year older and I could feel that the timing was right. I also had forced her to open her birthday presents the night before, so she totally thought that she had already opened all of her gifts.

I had the idea of going to Starbucks to get her breakfast for her birthday. While on my way, I realized that there was a florist right next door and that I could add to the occasion with flowers. I was confident that she would love the poem, but I wanted to make the event as special as possible, even without the fighter jets.

I got the flowers and hid them in the back of my truck, hoping that they would survive the day without water.

After breakfast, I put the ring and poem in my bag and we were on our way.

The whale watch was four hours long and afterwards we both needed to go to the bathroom. The lines at the dock were too long, so I convinced her to hold it until our next stop.

By this time, we were running late to make it into Boston on time for dinner and the daylight hours were running out. However, I took Heather to Rockport for the grand finale of our trip. I knew of a great lookout point over Bearskin Neck that would be a great location for the proposal.

We hurried to find bathrooms, and ended up buying something at a café with a restroom, just to speed things along. I rushed Heather by the many cute shops and drove us up to the lookout. By this time, I was determined to get this done and knew that time was running out.

I parked the car and gave her the flowers before she got out of the car. We walked onto the rocks overlooking the harbor and seaport town of Rockport. The timing ended up working out perfectly, as the sun was just starting to set (and there weren't many people nearby).

I asked her to sit down and face the sunset, as I knelt before her and told her that I wanted to recite her a poem that I wrote.

As I figured, she was very excited and still had no idea about the ending.

I couldn’t help but get choked up a bit while reading the poem. The sequence was playing out exactly as it had gone through my head. At this moment I was the proudest guy in the world.

As I write this a few months later, it feels like a dream. It was such a big step and I’m so thrilled that I made the leap. I am happier than I have ever been and can’t wait to move forward in life with Heather.

We’re reading wedding magazines, researching websites, considering invite lists and discussing decoration ideas. This is something that we’re both looking forward to organizing and orchestrating together.

You never know, one day we might be making plans in advance, having a routine, being on time and living our lives by a schedule. Or maybe not?

From Whales to Weddings ... or Humpbacks to Honeymoons

My birthday was Sat., Sept. 16. For the past month Doug has been bugging me almost daily to open my gifts, which is pretty typical of his behavior every holiday. He gets so excited that the anticipation nearly kills him. Every day I said with increasingly more irritation, "No. I wanna wait for my birthday." He finally wore me down the day before my birthday with the argument that he had activities in mind for Saturday and we'd be too rushed to do gifts that day too. So I acquiesced. The big gift .... an IPod inscribed "Play It Again, Sam" and loaded with all 203 Depeche Mode songs in my CD collection. Part of the reason he was so excited was because he had bought one for himself too but didn't want to use it until I had mine. I, of course, was thrilled and thought that was it.

On Saturday we hit the road early to destination unknown. It turned out we were headed to Gloucester to go on a whale watch, which I had never done and always wanted to do. We were out on the boat for four hours and saw five or six humpback whales. It was really cool and exciting to see the whales' tails come up out of the water and hear them "trumpet" when they got excited. The whole time Doug was kind of freaking out about his bag being beneath the bench while we were moving around the boat for optimal whale viewing. I kept assuring him, "No one is going to take your backpack." Now I know why he was so nervous. (The ring was inside.)

After the whale watch he said he had one more surprise, and we hit the road again, this time headed toward Rockport. At this point we both really had to pee, so the first order of business was to find a bathroom. We stopped at an information booth and the door was locked. So we drove downtown, parked and wandered around trying to find the facilities. Doug dragged me along while I tried to stop and look in windows and commented on how I wished we could go shopping.

After relieving our bladders, we hit the road again, eventually parking on a familiar street in Rockport that Doug had taken me to when we were first courting. He instructed me to stay in the car cause he had another surprise. He opened up the trunk and rustled around. Finally I was given permission to get out of the car and was greeted with beautiful fall-colored flowers, including orangey-peach roses and these cool puffy red things. We walked up the path next to the road, which leads out onto the rocks overlooking the ocean. I sat down on a bench to watch the sunset. Doug hunkered down in front of the bench and read a poem that he had written for me. It was very sweet and made references to the various adventures we have shared. (He even managed to get "tofu" in there somehow.) The poem ended with the big question. I, of course, said yes, and burst into tears when he took the ring out of his pocket. I never saw it coming!!!

So, onto the ring. It is platinum and has a beautiful round colorless diamond surrounded by a sapphire on either side (my birthstone) and then diamonds on either side of the sapphires. (So it is D-S-BIG D-S-D.) It is absolutely gorgeous and perfect!!!!

No plans yet, but we suspect the wedding will be in about a year. We both like fall weddings.

So that's the scoop! I am soooooooooo excited!!!!

-Heather