A Legacy Project

It wasn’t much of a proposal. Really, it wasn’t a proposal at all. It was a consensus decision. Well, yeah, I guess we ought to get married. 

We are driving south on I-75, coming home from a ski trip. It was a Sunday night. There was a lot of traffic. We’d spent the weekend up North with Tizi’s cousin and his wife, married just a few months. Things seemed to be working out pretty well for them.

“What do you think?” I said. She nodded, okay. Then I said, “What about a ring?” 

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. I was not very well employed. Career-wise, I was still a work in process. But I felt like there should have been a little more ceremony involved. Supposedly we were only going to do this once. Maybe I should have pulled over and, right there on the shoulder of the road, opened the passenger door and got down on one knee?

She said the ring she wanted I couldn’t afford. So why waste time on that? 

I said, “It’s just, you know. Engagement? To make it official?”

“Actually,” she said, “I could really use a new pair of skis.”

So that was it: we settled on engagement skis. 

We shared our decision with her parents over dessert at the next Sunday dinner. I had always imagined employing the traditional language in that situation,–I’m asking for your daughter’s hand, but I didn’t know how to say any of that in Italian. However Tizi translated our announcement, it felt kind of flat. Like we’ve decided to start eating whole wheat bread. I had anticipated an Italian reaction. Hands thrown in the air, cheek-kissing, maybe a little Asti Spumante. Her dad just kind of shrugged and said, Ok. When her mom smiled, I detected a little sparkle.

A week later, my parents, rarely ones to rise to the occasion and say the right thing, were aghast. What? So soon? My yearly salary, they must have known, was still in three figures. They said, Shouldn’t we wait until I was settled? They could have said that’s great, but what about . . . ? They could have tried to look happy. What we got was flummox. We pointed out that Tizi had a great job, that she was settled, that she was eminently practical. We might have mentioned engagement skis as proof. They were not happy. Tizi interpreted it as they were not happy with her. 

We got started on the wrong foot.