The Engagement (aka the happiest day of my life)

Original post date: 13 May 2008

I bet you've been waiting for this update. I'm sneakily doing this at work because I need to write this down before I forget all the little details and I'm just not finding the time outside of work and I'm not doing anything at work right now, so.... I'm being bad.

Anyway.

Rewind to Thursday, May 1. James lets it slip that he's going to ask me "very soon." I start wondering if that means that weekend or that coming week or that month. The next day after work, James and I went to Venice Beach to bike around on the strand. It turned out to be quite a strange night. We parked in Marina del Rey and biked to Venice, and as we pedaled down Venice Beach Blvd, I accidentally swerved my bike right as a car went zooming by me. I felt like I narrowly missed being hit, even though most likely it wasn't as close a call as I imagined it to be. Anyway, I was shaken up by it and we pulled over to the side and I told James what had happened and I got a little teary at the thought of my close brush with death. Or injury. Or whatever.

We went on to Venice Beach and cruised through the crowds on the boardwalk (which isn't a boardwalk in the East Coast sense at all, there being no boards involved whatsoever, it's all cement) and then went out onto the bike trail for a little bit. It was getting on towards sunset and I had speculated with Alison that afternoon if he'd choose to do it on the beach at sunset. So I was wondering that as we biked along, but I couldn't help noticing all the homeless people huddled on the grassy hills that separate the bike path from the boardwalk. And I was affected by their desperate situation, and how hopeless life must seem to them, and how bizarre it was that everyone was ignoring them and the strange contrast between the beauty of the beach and the misery of their condition. And I was talking to James about this and feeling rather down, and the sunset was smudgy and smoggy and disappearing behind the Santa Monica mountains and being altogether unimpressive. And then as we biked along I saw a homeless man staggering and falling over, and I couldn't help but watch him and hope he wasn't hurting himself, when all of the sudden I realized he was peeing and I was looking at his... thingie. Talk about traumatizing.

So we biked a little bit but then turned back and went to a restaurant on the boardwalk. We ate greasy food and drank disappointing, slurpee-like margaritas, and it wasn't too surprising that afterwords my stomach revolted and I felt incredibly lousy. we biked back to the car, maybe a fifteen minute ride, and it was misery the whole way. When we got home, I had to deal with the unpleasantries of my rioting stomach, and then all I could do was lie in bed with James and watch a DVD from Netflix. It was a strange evening and I was secretly glad that James didn't propose that night.

The next day, Saturday, James, Steve and I went to a craft fair in the park near our apartment. James and I looked around a while and lost track of Steve until I got a call from him saying that the cable guy was in the apartment and we needed to come home right away because he had to leave for class. We hurried home, excited at the fact that it was 12:30 and the cable guy was scheduled to come between 1 and 4pm, which meant that our afternoon was no longer held hostage with waiting for him to show up. The cable guy quickly installed our telephone, and James and I had lunch and went on our way to Point Mugu State Park, a place James wanted to scout for our Memorial Day camping trip. On the way we stopped at Target and picked up a few things, including a camping stove. We had packed a cooler and some food and we were planning on cooking dinner somewhere in Point Mugu.

We had a lovely drive up the coast to Point Mugu, with me reading articles out of the Time 100 issue aloud to James. We came across a random sand dune piled high against a cliff, and there were a bunch of cars parked below and people scampering about on top. James asked me if I wanted to stop, and of course I said yes. Who wouldn't want to clamber up a random three story pile of sand? So we climbed it, huffing and puffng our way all the way to the top, sliding back a little with each step forward, getting sand deep into our shoes, conquering that steep mother in ten step bursts. From the top, we had a great view of the coastline and the truck looked impressively tiny parked down below - too bad I forgot to grab my camera out of my purse before assaulting the dune! There were kids running around and threatening mischeif, so we didn't linger there too long. We trotted down, and as we did one of the kids blazed down the hill and almost bowled James over.

We continued on to Point Mugu, stopping once along the side of the road to look at a swath of wetlands or bogs or something along those lines - anyway, there were a lot of frogs croaking away in there. Then we drove into the Point Mugu and parked in a little non-descript parking lot. We found the trailhead and there was a little sign that said "waterfall - 0.8 mi" and James said "Let's go there," so off we went.

We passed a pair of women walking in the other direction at one point, but otherwise we were totally alone on the trail. We hiked through a canyon that was nestled between two scrubby hill-mountains. There were rocks and cacti and the trail was dusty and I was thinking about rattlesnakes hidden along the way and James teased me about scorpions. I was wondering if he'd propose but I dismissed the idea because he wasn't nervous at all and I was expecting that he'd be constantly patting his pockets to make sure the ring was still there. He wasn't, so I wasn't expecting anything to happen.

We found the waterfall, which was really just a few trickles of water over some mossy green rocks, and there was a little crystal pool of water at the bottom. There were three hummingbirds flitting around when we got there, and a dove startled and flew off. I commented about how magical it was - there was something very Secret Garden-y about this spot. We clamberd down some rocks to a rocky ledge overlooking the canyon, and James looked around and said "Well, this looks like a good place to propose."

I immediately clapped both hands over my mouth and said "Ohmygodreally?!" I felt tears welling up in my eyes. James pulled the ring out of his jeans pocket and got down on one knee. This is probably where I started bawling - it's hard to say exactly when it started, just that it was definitely happening. He looked up at me and said "Suzi, will you take this ring and marry me?" I remember gripping his right hand - the ring was in his left - for support. I said yes and extended my very shaky left hand towards him, and he slipped the ring on my finger. I dropped to my knees and hugged him and kissed him and said yes a couple more times. Eventually we settled at the edge of the rocky ledge and held each other and looked at the ring - I didnt' get a good look at it until that moment - and James took pictures of the two of us because my dad had asked him to get pictures after he asked me.

We sat there holding each other for a while, then we hiked back to our car. I was still in shock and randomly bursting into tears - a state that continued for about two hours. I called my parents because it was getting late on the East Coast, and I told them how it happened and cried a little and my parents congratulated us and said how happy they were for us.

We drove to the beach and parked at a nice little spot with fires in big metal drums and picnic tables and a couple families around. It was just past sunset, so James and I went over to ask one group what time the beach closed. I kept thinking how we'd just gotten engaged and how magical it had been and how all my dreams were coming true and I could help but tear up again. I was trying to hold it back but the moms in the group started looking concerned and I couldn't hold in in any more and I burst out "We just got engaged!" and I thrust my be-ringed hand towards them. All the ladies cooed and everyone started saying their congratulations and I was laughing and crying at the same time. One of the ladies said we had to take a bottle of wine, and she went into her SUV and pulled out a bottle of sparkling white, which someone uncorked. They gave us the bottle and a couple styrofoam cups and we thanked them profusely and went on our merry way. We found a massive tree trunk of driftwood that was resting at the water's edge, and we sat down on it and toasted to our future with the waves crashing at our feet. It was absolutely perfect.

After a little while, we climbed into the truck bed to try and start making dinner, but it was getting windy and cold and dark. It wasn't too long before a diembodied, official-sounding voice came over a bullhorn and informed us that the beach was closing. So we packed up and drove off to look for a restaurant. Along the way, James called a couple friends but it was too late on the East Coast for me to call anyone. We found a little Mexican restuarant that was miraculously still open - it was pretty late on the West Coast by this time, too - and James called his parents. I talked to his mom a little bit and she welcomed me to the family, which was really sweet and a tiny bit overwhelming.

We had dinner and drove back home. I told my brother right away and he congratulated us and I hugged him and he kept saying how happy I was - I was grinning like mad.

The next day we spent a good amount of time calling people to let them know... and glowing in our happiness. We also had to do our normal Sunday chores, grocery shopping and laundry and the like - and I kept marvelling about how we were doing all the things we normally do -- except now we were engaged!

We've been engaged for over a week now and I'm still slipping into wonderful "I can't believe this has happened to me, I'm the luckiest girl in the world" reveries.