2 Years and Counting

Two years ago today Ray and I were in the middle of trying to put up crown molding in the master bedroom… it was our first time and thank goodness none of the kids were born yet, because if I remember correctly there were a few choice four letter words being used regularly by at least one of us. I was 20 weeks pregnant and Ray and I had just found out a few days earlier that we were having a boy (hello Noah!!).

I wasn’t sure if I what I was feeling was due to hormones or if it was real, but I had felt that Ray was acting strangely all week. When I had asked him what was wrong, he would either tell me “Nothing” … or even worse… there were times when he told me that he had something that he was thinking about, but he didn’t know how to tell me and couldn’t talk about it!!!!! Now tell me that wouldn’t send any woman off the deep end, especially one that was pregnant. He and I talked about everything… we always had since our first date 3 years earlier. It bothered me that there was something that he felt he could not talk to me about.

Soooo… Saturday morning we woke up with the intention to finish putting up the crown molding. We were laying in bed and the “Subject that couldn’t be talked about” came up again…. and again he told me that he wanted to talk about it, but didn’t know if how. Tears started rolling down the sides of my face… my mind started racing… what could it be… what was it?

He got up out of bed, got down on the floor and pet his dog. Then he crawled over to my side of the bed… he leaned over onto the bed, looked at me and started talking. He told me that he loved me, that I was his best friend and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Then he asked me if I wanted to marry him… I replied something like ” You’ve asked me a hundred times already and my answer is still yes… you know that, so how is asking me this time any different?” To which he replied, while pulling out a small cherry wood box “Because this time I’m on my knees and I have a ring.”

I thought the box looked like the box his class ring was in, so I laughed through my tears and said “What’s that? Your class ring?” At the same time he opened the box and pulled out a diamond ring!

I was floored!!! We had talked about rings before and looked at a few of them… although I liked the traditional rings, I knew that they weren’t me… I preferred just a simple band… just a wedding band. Well he brought it up a notch, the band has a row of eight diamonds and I love it. It is both my engagement and wedding ring, and I couldn’t have picked a better one for myself!

So that was what he couldn’t talk to me about… which was understandable once I knew! We finished putting up the crown molding that day and before we nailed up the last piece we tucked in a piece of paper with our names, the date and “We got engaged today”. Maybe one day, years from now, someone will take down that piece of molding and will find it and wonder.