An Uncommon Proposal

If I painted it in broad strokes, this narrative would be common enough.  It'd be the classic love story.  Boy meets girl.  They fall in love.  Boy asks girl to marry him.  She says yes.  Told that way, it's the blissfully ordinary tale of an average boy and girl who plan to get married and hope to live happily ever after.  

But, of course you know, I'm not talking about the average boy and girl.  

The boy in this story is a blind kid from the country who lives for music and wants to be a lawyer when he grows up.   And the girl?   She's one of a kind.

If you haven't guessed by now, this is all about Sini and me.  On Sunday, I asked her if she would marry me, and she said yes.

SHE SAID YES!!!

I apologize for the all-caps text, but I really do feel like I want to shout this for all the world to hear.  It's possible that I've never been more excited about anything in my entire life.  I thought I understood what the phrase on cloud nine meant but, prior to this point, my knowledge was purely academic.  Now, I get it completely.  I'm so happy I might as well be floating.

For some reason, Sini is amused by my current mental state.  She informed me yesterday that I'm 'emoting like a child' which, I assume, isn't necessarily a compliment.  She also said it was adorable, so in spite of the fact that she'd more or less called me childish, it was pretty hard for me to feel insulted.

My sustained good humour isn't just affecting Sini and me, either.  Almost everyone in the house has remarked on it in in some way or other.  The best comment, though, actually came from Pax.   I may have mentioned before that Sini thinks Pax is an exceptionally gifted empath.  So far, I'm the only human whose emotions Sini has been able to sense, and it only works if she's near me and I'm feeling something very strongly.  Pax, on the other hand, seems to be able to sense strong emotions in all of us.  Anyway, yesterday afternoon I heard him singing to himself while he was playing in the living room, and I asked him what was up.

"I feel Tyler being happy, I happy too," he said, and then added philosophically,  "Happy is like candy for my brain."

You know what?  Being this happy is like candy for my brain, too.   In fact, I think my brain is on a metaphorical sugar high at the moment. 

But, enough about how overjoyed I am.  I imagine you're getting the picture by now, and you're probably wondering just how I achieved this state of bliss.  Let me start at the beginning, okay?  I said this was an uncommon proposal.   Telling you how we got to the 'proposal' part is going to take a bit of explanation. 

Sini and I started talking about marriage last year, at least in general terms.   Over the course of our relationship we've discovered a lot of drastic cultural differences between Earth and Eris.  Each of us wanted to figure out what it means to be married on our respective worlds.  The first time we ever discussed it was back in November of last year, the weekend of Michael and Rommie's wedding.  Sini asked me what they were doing, and I tried my best to explain it to her.

"A wedding is a kind of ceremony," I said. "When two people love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together, they get married.   They promise to share their thoughts and feelings, and they promise to take care of each other no matter what."

"That is good," she said, and I could tell by her voice that she was pleased. "It is that way on my world, too.  We are married." 

"No, you and I aren't married."

"But, I love you," she said, in a way that never fails to melt my heart. "I take care of you and I feel your feelings.  I know you cannot share my feelings the way I share yours, but you love me and take care of me.  You said this is what 'married' means."

"Yes, I do love you very much.  I take care of you and I try to share your feelings the best way I can, but we're not married.  You've got to have a wedding to be married."

"Why?"

"Well, you just do.  That's how it is."

"But why?" she persisted. "I do not understand.  You are the other half of my soul.  Am I not the other half of yours?" 

That's when it occurred to me that the Erisan word which translates as the other half of my soul might not be just a term of endearment like 'darling' or 'sweetheart'.   Maybe, I thought, it has a deeper connotation.  After all, I was just as clueless about the marriage customs of Sini's people as she was about ours. 

"Sini, what does that mean?" I said.  "On your world, when you say somebody is the other half of your soul, what are you really saying?"

"You are the person who completes me," she said. "You are the part I was missing, the one who brings comfort when I hurt, calm when I am afraid, and reason when I do not know what to do.  You understand me like no other person understands, and you accept me as I am."

"All that."

"All that," she said.  "Am I the one who means all that to you as well?"

"Yes," I said.  "You know you are.   You really are the person who completes me."

"We are everything to each other.  Is that not what 'married' means?"

"Well...yes," I had to concede.

"Then, you are my wife."

Despite the seriousness of our conversation, I laughed at that.  "Your husband, Sini.  When a man and a woman get married, she's the wife and he's the husband."

"You are my husband," she said.

"Not here," I said.  "We'd still need to have a wedding before I could be your husband."

"And this is important to you?"

"Having a wedding?"

"Being my husband."

"Yes.  Being your husband would mean a lot to me," I said.

"Then, we should have a wedding."

"I think you need to understand it a little better, first."  

"Help me understand it," she said.  "Why do humans have weddings?"

"We do it because we want to make things official, so everyone knows the people getting married belong to each other and no one else," I said.  "I guess weddings are a way for people to celebrate their love.  You know, announce to the world that they're totally committed to each other."

"We already celebrate our love, and we have Skyla.  She is proof enough for everyone that we celebrate our love, I think."

"Uh...that's not the kind of celebrating that happens at a wedding," I said.

"Oh."

"Yeah, that happens in private, after the wedding."

"But, we have never had a wedding, and we--"

"I know," I said.  "Obviously, you can do that without a wedding.  It's just that you're not married until you have a wedding."  

"This custom of weddings is very confusing.   Maybe you are right.  Maybe we should not have one until I understand."

"I guess I'm not doing a very good job of explaining it," I said.  "Maybe you should ask Rommie about it."

I don't know if Sini ever talked about it with Rommie, but I know she asked Sapphire a bunch of questions.  Her chat with Sapphire only left her more confused than ever and, as a result, she told me that she couldn't get married because she was afraid of tax implications.

Never ask a lawyer to do a normal human's job.  Seriously.

I'm not sure what Sini thought 'tax implications' were, but she seemed to have gotten the impression that they were horribly life-altering.  She didn't want to talk about it with me at first, and she actually cried because she was so scared.   It was obvious she hadn't really understood what Sapphire had been talking about, and it took the better part of an hour for me to undo the damage done by Sapphire's discourse on the tax implications of marriage.  Just explaining to Sini what Canadian taxes are all about and why we have to pay them was a challenge in itself.   

We didn't discuss marriage again for a long time after that conversation, which is hardly surprising when I think back on it.   Just recently, though, the subject of marriage came up again when Xander said something about wanting to marry his boyfriend Remi some day.  Incredibly, it was Xander who finally seems to have helped Sini grasp the purpose of a wedding.

"A wedding isn't about telling the world you're in love.  I mean, you wouldn't be having a wedding if you weren't, right?  What it's really about," he said, "is letting everyone know this person is the most important part of your life and you promise to do everything in your power to make sure that never changes.   You don't actually make the promise at the wedding, though.  Like, you shouldn't even have a wedding if you haven't already promised that.  The wedding is just where you make it public, so everybody knows  how totally serious you are about it."

It's astounding to think that Sini's enlightenment about weddings came from Xander, an eighteen year old kid who hasn't even seen his boyfriend in the flesh.   It seems as though Xander has given the subject a lot of thought.  I guess maybe he's deeper than I've ever given him credit for. 

Anyway, that particular conversation happened around the end of May.   Sini must've been doing a lot of thinking about it in the intervening time between then and now, because just a few days ago, she told me that she thought she finally understood human weddings.  She said Xander helped her realize there's a very important distinction between a wedding and a marriage.  It isn't the wedding itself that's really important, she said.  The wedding is just a symbol.   The marriage is the important part; all the things that the couple does together after the wedding.

"I think I am ready to have a wedding," she said.  "I want you to marry me."

I couldn't help laughing at the forthrightness of that.   I said, "Sini, are you proposing to me?"

"Proposing?"

 "When one person asks another person to marry them, we call it 'proposing' marriage."

 "Do you have rules about who can propose?"

"No.  Anyone can propose, but in a male and female couple, it's usually the guy who proposes to the woman."

She pondered that for a moment, and then she said, "Maybe you should propose to me. I want us to do this the Earth way."

"Okay," I said. "I'll propose to you, but if you want to do it in the way that's traditional for this part of Earth, then I'll have to give you an engagement present, too.  It might take a little while to pick out the right thing.  Is that okay?"

"A present?"

"It's usually a ring," I told her.

"But I do not like rings.  They make my fingers feel too heavy."

"I know you don't like them, but it doesn't have to be a ring.  Give me a couple of days and let me surprise you, okay?"

"I like surprises," she said, and she sounded just like a little kid on the night before Christmas.

The next day, I enlisted Beau and Dylan to help me pick out something nice.   It probably would've been logical for me to ask Michael for help, seeing as he's the only one around here who has any experience with engagement gifts, but I was convinced that Dylan and Beau would do a better job of advising me than Michael would.  My brother isn't the sentimental type.   Dylan, on the other hand, is a hopeless romantic.  Beau's partner, Georgia Lee, is as incurably girly as Sini, so I figured he'd have some insight into an appropriate gift.

I couldn't afford anything at the first two jewelry stores we visited.  To be honest, I don't think I would've bought anything at either of those places even if I could've afforded it.   The staff at both places were rude and condescending, and it was fairly clear that three young guys in jeans had no place in their high-class establishments, even if one of these aforesaid guys happened to be searching for a present for his bride-to-be. 

The third place we tried was where my luck started to run the other way.   The woman working there was friendly and super helpful.   She asked all kinds of questions about Sini and me and, because she knew I couldn't see them, she described all the necklaces and bracelets that Beau and Dylan thought Sini might like.   She even let me touch them, which was something that probably would've made the people in the other stores keel over with shock and horror.  Fingerprints on the merchandise?  No!

in the end, I chose a necklace with a faceted pink crystal in the shape of a heart.  I like it because it's interesting to touch.   

When we got home, Sini met us at the door.   She knew we'd been out shopping.   She practically smothered me with kisses and informed me that she knew I'd found a wonderful present for her because she could feel how excited I was.   The guys apparently couldn't resist making fun of me, saying stuff like,  "You know you're doomed when you're willing to marry a woman who can actually read your mind."

Sini wanted to see her present right away, but I told her she had to wait.   I said that if we were going to do this the traditional way, the two of us had to be alone in a nice, quiet setting.  It had to be meaningful.  She agreed that would be best.

So, on Sunday afternoon in the garden, I asked my soulmate if she'd marry me.   I got down on my knees and everything.

This is probably going to sound odd but, even though I was absolutely certain what her answer would be, I was still nervous.  I felt like I couldn't breathe in the seconds between the end of my question and the beginning of her answer.    Then, when she said yes, it was like there was this big explosion of excitement inside my body.   It was the most amazing thing.

Sini asked me if I'd put the necklace on her, and I did it happily.

  
 "Did I do good?"

"Well," she corrected, and then laughed.  "Yes, you did very well.  It is beautiful."

"I'm glad you think so."

"I think it is a perfect symbol for us.  A heart, for our love," she said, and then added softly, "And pink, like sunrise."

That was the moment at which I knew what people mean when they say their hearts are full.  It was as if I was overflowing with joy.   I know life isn't like a fairy tale - nothing is ever truly perfect - but right then and there I let myself forget that, just for a little while.  I wanted this chapter in The Story of Sini and Tyler to conclude "...and they lived happily ever after."