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penfield"...I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."
- excerpt of "Molly Bloom's soliloquy" from James Joyce's Ulysses
I decided to propose marriage to my girlfriend way back in mid-September. But under our governing social customs, you can't just ask someone to marry you all willy-nilly, like you're requesting extra bread. No, you have to show that you really mean it by also offering a significant piece of jewelry -- jewelry that, by the way, must symbolize, characterize and quantify your relationship while also appealing to her unique aesthetic sensibilities.
Eagerly, I endeavored to do so. I discreetly sought counsel from a prior purchaser as well as a former recipient of such baubles, consulted online resources like BlueNile.com and aDiamondisForever.com, and surveyed various jewelry retailers to find the perfect token of my undying love.
Perhaps my decision-making was too belabored, stretching well into October. Working with a committed and interminably patient retail sales associate, I finally settled on the most beautiful ring I had seen. (Pictures and flowery description available upon request.) I was informed that four to six weeks would be required for the designer to make the ring by hand. Apparently they do not just have these gorgeous items lying around the warehouse.
This matched up almost perfectly with my target proposal date, the few days between my birthday and Thanksgiving. It would be ideal, I figured, if J. and I could make the happy announcement in the company of her extended family.
It soon became clear that the ring was not going to be ready for my birthday, but I was informed with a high level of confidence that the ring would be finished for me to pick up on the night of Tuesday, November 25 -- the night before we left for Detroit. Not perfect, but okay -- I would still have Tuesday night and all of Wednesday to give her my rhapsody.
But something happened, who knows what, that delayed the ring's release from the designer, meaning that it was going to be delivered late to the jeweler (to insert the diamond). The plan then became to finish the ring on Wednesday and send it overnight so that I would receive it on Thursday, Thanksgiving morning. Certainly not preferable, but manageable; perhaps I could do my thing before we left for her uncle's house, or even sneak away at some point before the feast.
(This also meant that I would have to concoct some kind of ruse to (a) obtain her mother's mailing address and (b) explain why I was receiving an urgent package over a holiday weekend. So I made up a story about a critical developing pension-related news story and leaving my Blackberry at work. I suppose I therefore owe a partial thank-you to the U.S. government, without whose chronic incompetence this excuse would not have been plausible.)
Then, on Wednesday afternoon, my dedicated and interminably patient retail sales associate phoned me to say that the jeweler's official selected shipping provider did not deliver overnight packages on holidays, which meant that it would have to wait until Friday morning. Annoying, because it meant a Thanksgiving spiced with marriage-related innuendo, but defensible in that the extended family was allowed a chance to give me -- in political parlance -- a thorough "vetting".
Later, on Wednesday evening, I was informed that -- whoops -- the designer had sent the item to the jeweler's corporate headquarters, rather than the jeweler's actual jeweler, which meant that it had to be overnighted from the Jeweler to the Jeweler's jeweler before the stone could be set and the ring could then be overnighted to me, on Saturday morning. Theoretically.
At this, I was starting to panic, not only because the anticipation was driving me bananas, but because we were due to leave on Sunday and if there were any more delays I was going to have to have it re-routed back to Washington D.C. Not to mention the fact that it only gave me a 24-hour window to actually propose, with earlier being better so that J. could fully celebrate the moment with her mom.
My dedicated and interminably patient retail sales associate, living up to his moniker and ensuring my lifetime brand loyalty, assured me that the package would indeed arrive before 10 a.m. on Saturday. It was basically my last best shot.
So I spent the next 36 hours sweating, suffering, tossing, turning and toiling until I could finally get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and wait for my "blackberry" to arrive. And when it did arrive, it was everything I had hoped for (besides, you know, being on time).
And so, aided only by some private, prepared remarks, I gave J. the shiniest wake-up call ever. And she gave me the best Thanksgiving of my life. There were some tears, lots of hugs and many, many phone calls. Odyssey aside, it was practically perfect.
Except for one thing: the ring is the wrong size.
But you know, the ring itself is secondary to the "yes." There's a certain, satisfying ring to that.
- excerpt of "Molly Bloom's soliloquy" from James Joyce's Ulysses
I decided to propose marriage to my girlfriend way back in mid-September. But under our governing social customs, you can't just ask someone to marry you all willy-nilly, like you're requesting extra bread. No, you have to show that you really mean it by also offering a significant piece of jewelry -- jewelry that, by the way, must symbolize, characterize and quantify your relationship while also appealing to her unique aesthetic sensibilities.
Eagerly, I endeavored to do so. I discreetly sought counsel from a prior purchaser as well as a former recipient of such baubles, consulted online resources like BlueNile.com and aDiamondisForever.com, and surveyed various jewelry retailers to find the perfect token of my undying love.
Perhaps my decision-making was too belabored, stretching well into October. Working with a committed and interminably patient retail sales associate, I finally settled on the most beautiful ring I had seen. (Pictures and flowery description available upon request.) I was informed that four to six weeks would be required for the designer to make the ring by hand. Apparently they do not just have these gorgeous items lying around the warehouse.
This matched up almost perfectly with my target proposal date, the few days between my birthday and Thanksgiving. It would be ideal, I figured, if J. and I could make the happy announcement in the company of her extended family.
It soon became clear that the ring was not going to be ready for my birthday, but I was informed with a high level of confidence that the ring would be finished for me to pick up on the night of Tuesday, November 25 -- the night before we left for Detroit. Not perfect, but okay -- I would still have Tuesday night and all of Wednesday to give her my rhapsody.
But something happened, who knows what, that delayed the ring's release from the designer, meaning that it was going to be delivered late to the jeweler (to insert the diamond). The plan then became to finish the ring on Wednesday and send it overnight so that I would receive it on Thursday, Thanksgiving morning. Certainly not preferable, but manageable; perhaps I could do my thing before we left for her uncle's house, or even sneak away at some point before the feast.
(This also meant that I would have to concoct some kind of ruse to (a) obtain her mother's mailing address and (b) explain why I was receiving an urgent package over a holiday weekend. So I made up a story about a critical developing pension-related news story and leaving my Blackberry at work. I suppose I therefore owe a partial thank-you to the U.S. government, without whose chronic incompetence this excuse would not have been plausible.)
Then, on Wednesday afternoon, my dedicated and interminably patient retail sales associate phoned me to say that the jeweler's official selected shipping provider did not deliver overnight packages on holidays, which meant that it would have to wait until Friday morning. Annoying, because it meant a Thanksgiving spiced with marriage-related innuendo, but defensible in that the extended family was allowed a chance to give me -- in political parlance -- a thorough "vetting".
Later, on Wednesday evening, I was informed that -- whoops -- the designer had sent the item to the jeweler's corporate headquarters, rather than the jeweler's actual jeweler, which meant that it had to be overnighted from the Jeweler to the Jeweler's jeweler before the stone could be set and the ring could then be overnighted to me, on Saturday morning. Theoretically.
At this, I was starting to panic, not only because the anticipation was driving me bananas, but because we were due to leave on Sunday and if there were any more delays I was going to have to have it re-routed back to Washington D.C. Not to mention the fact that it only gave me a 24-hour window to actually propose, with earlier being better so that J. could fully celebrate the moment with her mom.
My dedicated and interminably patient retail sales associate, living up to his moniker and ensuring my lifetime brand loyalty, assured me that the package would indeed arrive before 10 a.m. on Saturday. It was basically my last best shot.
So I spent the next 36 hours sweating, suffering, tossing, turning and toiling until I could finally get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday and wait for my "blackberry" to arrive. And when it did arrive, it was everything I had hoped for (besides, you know, being on time).
And so, aided only by some private, prepared remarks, I gave J. the shiniest wake-up call ever. And she gave me the best Thanksgiving of my life. There were some tears, lots of hugs and many, many phone calls. Odyssey aside, it was practically perfect.
Except for one thing: the ring is the wrong size.
But you know, the ring itself is secondary to the "yes." There's a certain, satisfying ring to that.
