Engaged!

So… three weeks ago today, I drove home to Pittsburgh from Michigan. I had just spent two weeks with my mother at our family’s cottage, hanging out and creating art in the chilly air of Up North. It was a nice drive, quite smooth, quite flat (Ohio!), and rather uneventful. I kept watching the clock tick by the hours: five hours to Pittsburgh, four hours, three hours, two hours until I could see my boyfriend again.

That sounded so cheesy, though. Counting down the hours until I could see my boyfriend. Little did I know that Kylie would retain that title for only a few more hours. After watching so many of my friends “bite the dust” (to quote another friend), I was experiencing what that meant. To “bite the dust” meant that I—an arguably independent, confident individual—did not like being away from someone else, not even in one of my favorite places on the planet. I was attached.

Apparently, Kylie was attached too. Or maybe he was simply overly excited that I was coming home so that he wouldn’t have to take care of my cat anymore—you be the judge. When I rolled into Pittsburgh late Friday night on August seventh, I found: an apartment lined with tea candles on bookshelves and tables. Dinner warm on the stove. Classical music that I recognized, but couldn’t name, in the background. (“What music is this?” I asked. “The soundtrack to Battlestar Galactica,” he replied. Mmm. Perfect.)

There were more tea candles on the balcony, where we ate the dinner (Indian curry, since you asked). When we took the dishes back into the kitchen, Kylie said, “Wait here. Don’t move. Don’t even breathe.”

I obediently stood frozen next to the humming refrigerator—but like a good yogini, I continued to breathe. I suspected what was coming, but hadn’t expected it that evening. When Kylie came back into the kitchen, he bent down on one knee and asked me to marry him… …and I romantically answered, “Of course.”

So now I’m wearing an emerald ring flanked by two diamonds and a Celtic weave on my finger. I wanted an emerald (requested it actually). Green is one of my favorite colors, and I loved the wedding-commercial defiant idea of wearing an emerald instead of a diamond. Green is the color of life, of spring, of love, and of faithfulness. It’s the color of the heart chakra, which is opened through yoga, through love, and definitely through pledging to be married.

And that is the story. Life is a bit busy these days, so I haven’t had time to post it yet. Today’s my first free day since the engagement began. Exciting, isn’t it? I’m marrying a man who is daily proof to me—through action and word, indeed, through his very existence—that God exists. Sounds good to me!