by Lisa McKay
“Uh, I’m a little behind here,” I sent back after a brief pause. “So you really are thinking seriously about not staying until December?”
This time Mike used the party emoticon.
“Yeah,” he said.
“I didn’t think it was in the serious zone yet,” I said. “I thought it was in the thinking zone. Huh. Good to know.”
“Thinking-to-serious can happen quite quickly for me,” Mike wrote.
Malibu, USA
I thought that our not talking about Mike leaving PNG until the end of May was wise. It meant we could have a relaxed month. A month that as much as possible simulated a normal relationship. A month full of talking and all those aspects of dating that are pretty hard to replicate over Skype, no matter how creative you are with emoticons. A month to see whether we really were as good together face-to-face as we were over distance. I was really looking forward to sharing candlelight dinners, movies, picnic blankets, strawberries, glasses of wine, touch. And a week after Mike arrived in L.A., that’s exactly what we were doing.
No, not touching. A picnic blanket, a grassy quiet hill, my favorite white wine, macadamia nuts, cheese and crackers, sunset, and the Pacific Ocean.
“Ah, Australia,” we said, looking out to sea as we toasted the Pacific.
“It’s just over there,” I said fondly, pointing.
“Well,” Mike said diplomatically, “you could get to Australia that way … if you wanted to go through Ecuador first.”
He handed me a strawberry.
“So,” he teased. “We have this whole list of topics to talk about that we haven’t tackled over Skype. What weighty topic do you want to discuss tonight?”
Tired after the emotional intensity of our first week together and all the talking we’d already done, I took the easy way out.
“You pick,” I said, smiling magnanimously.
“I don’t want to talk about anything on the list tonight,” Mike said
“Oh, okay,” I said, thinking that Mike must finally have had his fill of intensity and was after light and fluffy banter. “Pick something else then, any topic.”
“Any topic? Any topic it all? Do you realize the power you’ve given me?”
“Use it wisely,” I said, lazily wondering where he was going to go with it.
*
Which was when he got on his knees in front of me and said, “Lisa Marie McKay, will you marry me?”
*
Before total shock set in three seconds later I thought, “WHAT???? Lisa, focus! You’ve just been asked a yes-or-no question. The answer is absolutely, categorically not no. So, uh, it must be… yes?”
So that is what I said. Or probably more accurately, that is what I squeaked.
*
The rest of the evening is a bit jumbled in my mind, less a blur than a slide show. I remember certain things very clearly and others not at all.
Right after I said yes, Mike pulled out not one engagement ring but eight.
“You would not believe how hard it is to research diamonds over a dial-up internet connection,” Mike said, waving a long string of woven cane rings around and talking very fast. “I’ve been trying to figure this out for weeks. I was completely sure I needed to have a ring until my colleague Sue told me, ‘Question first, ring later.’ So I figured a cane ring would be a good start. Plus, this way you can just pick the one that fits.”
“Okay,” I said, sliding one cane ring after another onto my finger.
“That one,” I said, pointing to a small one near the end of the chain.
Mike cut it free from its neighbors with his pocketknife and slid it onto my finger.
“So, where do you want to get married?” Mike asked.
I looked at him blankly. Who was Sue? Where did I want to get married? What had just happened?
“Weeks?” I said. “You’ve been thinking about this for weeks? Let’s start at the beginning.”
“Okay,” he said, “but we’ve got to meet your parents at the restaurant at seven.”
“My parents know?”
“I emailed them ten days ago,” Mike said.
*
The beachside Malibu restaurant we went to that night was gorgeous and the food was incredible. I took the fact that I was actually able to eat as a good sign (although worryingly, and completely out of character for me, I wasn’t able to finish dessert).
As Mike and my parents filled me in on the back story, I became progressively more overwhelmed. Mike’s weeks of planning and data-gathering about rings and proposal venues. How he had emailed my parents from PNG telling them what he was planning and asking if they could spend the day together after Mum and Dad arrived in L.A. five days after he did. How the three of them had talked all morning on Friday while I was at work getting mock-kidnapped by drunken militia during a security training exercise.
“I wanted to organize it so your parents would be the first people we’d see after the proposal,” Mike said. “So it worked out perfectly that they were here in L.A. this weekend on their way to Washington.”
“What did you talk about on Friday?” I asked.
“I asked for their blessing and their concerns,” Mike said. “It was all very natural, comfortable. It was great.”
“We asked whether you were expecting this,” Mum said.
“I asked whether he thought you’d say yes,” Dad said.
That counted as “comfortable” and “great”? I sneaked a look at Mike. He seemed unfazed.
“I said absolutely,” Mike said. “On both counts.”
“I said I wasn’t so sure,” Dad said.
Then, it seemed, they had started to talk odds.
“I thought there was a 95 percent chance of yes,” Mike said, “a 4 percent chance of ‘wait,’ and less than 1 percent chance of no.”
“I said I wasn’t so sure,” Dad said.
I didn’t ask Dad what his guesses had been.
I also didn’t say that I’d totally forgotten that “wait” might be a viable answer.
“The way I saw it,” Mike said, “‘yes’ or ‘wait’ were both wins anyway. I just wanted you to know exactly where I stand and that I want to commit to spending the rest of my life with you. So it was win-win, really.” Not for the first time, I admired Mike’s capacity for dauntless optimism. “Then your parents spent the rest of the morning telling me that my plan to surprise you at sunset over a glass of wine in Malibu wasn’t credible enough and we needed to tweak it to come up with something that was absolutely airtight. I really didn’t want you to figure it out and ruin the story, because I know you need stories.”
I bit my lip.
“Mike,” I said. “You just proposed to me after we’ve spent three weeks, total, in the same country. I don’t think story was ever going to be our biggest problem.”
Los Angeles, USA
After dinner, after we’d driven back to L.A., and after we’d dropped my parents off at their motel, Mike and I talked until almost 2 a.m.
It was then that a somewhat sobered Mike began to realize how far off our respective timelines had been.
“I thought we weren’t going to talk about your leaving the field until the end of the month,” I said to him.
“Yeah,” Mike said, looking puzzled. “I wanted you to have the security of knowing my intentions before we talked about that. Me leaving PNG and moving to L.A. has a big impact on your life.”
“Not as big as us getting married!” I said. “I would have been fine with you moving to L.A. without us being engaged.”
“Huh,” Mike said. “I guess I misjudged that one. I half feel like I should apologize, but I’m not sure what for, because I’m happy we’re engaged.”
He grinned despite his abashment, and I laughed.
“I need some time,” I said, stumbling over my explanation, not even quite sure what I was trying to say. “I want to give this decision some room to breathe. I need some time to process and focus on us rather than having all m
y energy go to dealing with the deluge of questions that will come when we tell people, you know.”
The answer, I told Mike that night, was both yes and wait. I didn’t know whether that meant waiting for two days, two weeks, or two years. But one thing I did know in the midst of this out-of-body-experience was that I didn’t want to start on a long list of “people to tell” and risk repeated conversations along the lines of:
Lisa: Mike and I are engaged.
Good friend No. 23 (looking totally stunned): Oh my word! Isn’t that a bit fast?
Lisa: Uh, yeah, I’m a bit thrown by it myself. I didn’t think we’d be addressing this question quite yet.
Good friend No. 23 (delicately): Are you sure you know what you doing?
Lisa (edging toward hysteria): I think so. I really think I do. All my instincts say yes. But then I came home this afternoon and he was cleaning my kitchen and playing Shakira and I realized that I didn’t know he likes Shakira, and I don’t know what music is on his iPod, and is it safe to agree to marry someone when you don’t know what music is on their iPod? Is it?? Huh??? HUH????”
Good friend No. 23: Um …
So at 2 a.m. after a rather exhausting conversation – the kind of conversation that anyone would want to have on the night she gets engaged, really – I said yes to something else that Mike offered me that night and did something I’d never done before.
I took Valium.
*
The next morning I dropped Mike off at my place after church on Sunday and went out for coffee with my parents.
“Take your time,” Dad said anxiously. “Don’t worry about how Mike’s doing. He’s had time to think this through. You just have to focus on whether or not this is what you want. Take as much time as you need.”
“Oh,” Mum said with a casual wave of one hand, “so he surprised you. So it’s not exactly unfolding the way you thought it would. So you hit an unanticipated speed bump. You’ll work it out. I think he’s terrific.” She grinned. “You know, there will be lots of good stories if you marry him.”
“Merrilyn! Please!” my father said, agonized, both hands going to his forehead. “You do not marry someone because they’ll give you stories.”
“Oh I don’t know,” Mum said. “There are worse reasons.”
“Don’t worry,” I said quickly, worried that Dad was courting a heart attack. “I’ll take the time I need.”
That turned out not to be two years, two months, or even two weeks. By Tuesday night I’d watched Mike hang on to a cheerful self-possession during three days of limbo and gone over and over it in my mind.
I wasn’t absolutely sure that it was the right decision, frankly, but I also knew that I’m never one hundred percent sure about anything in life. It’s just not in my nature. So just how sure did I need to be to make a commitment of this magnitude? Was it enough that I was a good sight surer of this than I’d been of any other major decision I’d ever made?
*
I walked into my place Tuesday night to see my favorite flowers in a vase and some of Mike’s favorites, red wine and dark chocolate, laid out on the coffee table.
“You got your favorite wine and chocolate the first time,” Mike told me later. “It was my turn.”
So it was that Mike, having judged that I was shaking off the shock, got down on one knee, again. And proposed, again.
“Because I wanted you to be able to remember it clearly,” he said.
And so it was that I said yes. Again.
Upon Hearing the News
Eileen Spencer (Lisa’s grandmother, by phone)
Lisa: Nanna, I just wanted to let you know that Mike and I are engaged.
Nanna: (relief evident) Oh, good. We’ve waited and prayed for a long time for this! A very long time.
Lisa: NANNA!
Mike: (laughing) I’ve waited a long time for this, too, Nanna.
Rosemary Wolfe (Mike’s mother, by phone)
Mike: Lisa and I are engaged.
Rosemary: Does this mean I have to go somewhere for a wedding? People at the office suggested that since you’ve dated over email, perhaps you’d have an e-wedding and we could just log in?
Matt McKay (Lisa’s brother, by Skype)
Lisa: Mike and I are engaged.
Matt: Wow. Wow. Uh, wow. (Long pause) That’s exciting. Wow. (Long pause) He’s a man of action, that one. Wow.
(By Skype 24 hours later)
Matt: I think an engagement for longer than a couple of months might be good. Don’t go to Vegas in the next three weeks, okay?
Lisa: I promise not to go to Vegas without telling you first.
Travis (Lisa’s former flatmate, by phone)
Travis: Congratulations. (Pause) Are you serious? (After confirmation) Holy cow, you’re the craziest person I know.
Juanita Grey (Lisa’s cousin, by phone)
Lisa: I thought I would ring and tell you I’m engaged.
Juanita: Oh, wow! I won’t insult you by asking who to.
Katy Vosswinkel (Mike’s friend, by email)
“CONGRATULATIONS!!! You know, I don’t think any engagement goes off the way you really think it’s going to. Well some do, but they’re cheesy.”
Teresa Murray (Mike’s friend, by email)
“Congratulations! So happy for you and, see, you did find your mate while in the middle of nowhere. Thank God for technology. And you are not crazy, you just know what you want. Life is too short for waiting. I always knew it would be a woman who would get you out of the field.”
Brandon Golm (Mike’s college roommate, by email)
“If she agrees to go to Vegas and get married now, I’ll pay for one for your flights (offer valid in the continental U.S. only!).”
Johanna Bradley (Lisa’s friend, by email)
“Fantastic news!! I don’t think this is too fast. Far too many people spend far too long thinking about getting married and miss a good year or two of marriage because they can’t make a decision.”
Tash White (Lisa’s friend, by phone)
“That’s great! Great!! I was pretty sure this was in the cards for you two.”
Dave Sweeting (Mike’s friend, by email)
“I was sweating a little halfway through your email. I thought Lisa was going to change her mind. But a happy ending after all, phew. So I’m guessing, at this rate, liklik pikininis (little children) by Christmas!?”
Dave Baker (Mike’s friend, by email)
“So, which God-forsaken, disease-ridden, Kalashnikov-toting, despair-inducing, horsehair-jock self-flagellating, barren/jungle/windswept wasteland will the wedding be in?”
Los Angeles – Accra – Washington, D.C. – Sydney – Zagreb – South Bend – Nairobi – San Diego – Atlanta – Madang – Kona – Canberra – London – Baltimore – Itonga – Vancouver – Harare – Dushanbe – Lira – Petats – Port Moresby – Brisbane – Ballina – Malibu
“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”
(Basho)
The Day Before
Ballina, Australia
We decided not to go for disease-ridden, Kalashnikov-toting, or despair-inducing when it came to picking a wedding venue. We decided to go home.
Mine, to be precise.
Or my parents’, to be more precise.
It’s been eight months since Mike proposed and four months since he packed up in Papua New Guinea and moved his life to Los Angeles. We did toy with the idea of his staying in PNG until December and just meeting up in Australia for the wedding, but we decided that that was too mail-order-spouse even for us. So we’ve been based in the same city for the past four months. Well, minus the two weeks I was in Africa for work. Oh, and a quick trip I took to D.C.
In a year full of good decisions, same-city living for a couple of months before the wedding was one of the best. It has let Mike get reacquainted with America after seven years away and given us shared experiences – decorating a Christmas tree, premarital counseling, learning that we h
ave very different conceptions of what constitutes a “fun hike.” Living in the same place has colored in between some of those lines we sketched out over Skype. The vast majority of those discoveries have been deliciously fun. Others, well …
“I don’t get it,” Mike said to me just six days ago at Los Angeles Airport. We were about to board the plane that would take us to Fiji and then on to Brisbane. I was carrying my wedding dress. It was the start of what I fully expected would become one of the happiest weeks of my life, and I was in the mood that commonly afflicts me in airports, frazzled and petulant.
“I don’t get it,” Mike repeated. “You’re such a centered, rational, cheerful person most of the time. And then you walk into an airport and become someone completely different.”
“Two words for you,” I said. “Cumulative stress. I’ve been flying like this since I was seven years old. I hate airports and all the noise and immigration officers who never know what they’re talking about and being squished up next to people on planes—”
“I still cannot believe that you booked yourself an aisle seat and me a window seat for our flight to New Zealand for our honeymoon.”
“Oh please,” I said. “This way we’re much more likely to have a seat spare on our row. If someone gets put in the middle, one of us will just switch with them.”
“That’s not the point,” Mike said. “It’s our honeymoon. I want to sit next to you on the plane, regardless.”
“We’ll have plenty of time in New Zealand to sit next to each other,” I said, unapologetic.
I wonder how long we will have been married before Mike decides that he really doesn’t want to sit next to me on planes?
Now it’s the day before the wedding. This morning I’m sitting on the side porch of the house, in the sun, looking out to sea over the laptop screen. The feathery leaves of the nearby poinciana tree are casting a delicate and wavery shade in the tease of the breeze. Clouds are scurrying around up there, storms threatening, as they will again tomorrow. This morning I went into the study to check the weather report and was a little disheartened to see “thunderstorms possible” listed next to the date of my wedding.