Dear Mom,
I can hardly believe that in less than two days, I have the honor of marrying the first boy I ever had a crush on.
You always had a soft spot in your heart for him... the cute little redhead who kept smiling at me during church... even back when we were kids. You weren't surprised in the least when we reconnected over twenty years later... when we fell head over heels for each other... again... or when he proposed on the Isle of Palms.
I remember your excitement when we called you afterwards... I remember our long talks about how much you were looking forward to recovering well enough to be able to be next to me when we exchange our vows. My matron of honor... and I know that you WILL be there, smiling down on us... probably saying, "Well, it's about time! I told you he was a keeper!"
It's going to be just us, the girls... our family... and even though we won't be able to celebrate in person with all of our friends and loved ones until after the pandemic retreats, it'll still be as perfect as can be.
I haven't finished writing my vows yet... I have so much of my heart to share--too much to fit into the span of a mere couple of minutes. I wish I could read them to you... so you can tell me if I'm being too funny when I should be serious... or being too serious when I should lighten up... but I think you would say to let my heart speak for itself instead of trying to nitpick at words.
There are less than two days until my first ever boyfriend also becomes my last... and I can hardly wait to tell you all about it. ♡
I miss you, Mom.
Love always,
"Pookie"
On Saturday, August 22, 2020, shortly before 4:30 PM, I stopped having a boyfriend. It wasn’t how I expected the day to turn out at all.
We made plans to meet a couple of our friends at the beach for the afternoon and then stop by their house later that night for a BBQ. The girls were excited about it all week… but then, Nathan informed us he had to work a half-day that day. I understood, but I was also a bit disappointed because I know how sometimes half days can turn into three-quarter days and I didn’t want the girls to miss out on going on the beach trip they’d been anticipating for so long.
In the morning, Nate reminded me that it was the ‘anniversary’ of the day we truly reconnected again… the random “go to bed” message I sent him that somehow led to the chain reaction of our shared life together. I was pretty darn impressed that he remembered… or even that he took the time to make a note of it. It’s not typically a ‘guyish’ thing to do, but he’s a “full of surprises” kind of guy.
The clouds outside were downcast. It even started drizzling as he left for work. Bummer. I prayed the rain would hold off a while so we could spend the day relaxing in the sand together. It was long overdue—especially after the summer it’d been. I caught myself in a daydream.
Aaaaand then I went into squirrel-mode trying to make sure everything was ready. I couldn’t forget the badminton net or the frisbee. There wasn’t a bag big enough for everything, so I just used the zippy bag from Aria’s bedding set… it worked well enough. Towels, check. Sunscreen, check. More sunscreen, check. Water bottles? Check. Ziplocs for collecting shells, check. I even sewed strings onto the girls’ sunhats so they wouldn’t fly away at the first strong breeze.
Am I forgetting anything? Oh yeah! A swimsuit coverup! I reached into the closet and grabbed the biggest, longest, frumpiest button-up shirt I could find, and threw it on. After all, it’s not like I had to impress anyone… it was just a casual day at the beach, not a beauty pageant, right?
Nathan pulled into the driveway as the girls and I were chomping at the bit all ready to leave. We were supposed to meet Heidi and Zac at the beach around 2, or so I thought. It turned out that they were meeting us at our house and THEN we were heading to the beach. That made sense too. Then, Nate told me that a few of our other friends would be there as well… I told him we should probably extend the invitation to Hannah, Kevin, Shasta, and Kimchi too and make it a group thing (I went off to find my volleyball… I’d been itching for a beach game anyway; there’s just usually never enough people) … but he said the others were busy. Maybe next time. I left the volleyball at home but remembered to quickly grab one of the books I’d been reading, “The Best Yes”. You can’t go to the beach without at least one book. It’s probably a rule somewhere.
Denise, Nick, and their crew (Tristan and Ella) showed up—followed shortly thereafter by Heidi and Zac. Everyone was in such a chipper mood for it being a gloomy-looking day. I chalked it up to coffee. Denise even took a few group selfies (which turned out great). It took us a little while to consolidate which beach we were going to and where we’d park since the island-parking-dictator-people recently limited beach parking in some areas… but we figured it out!
Windows down, our favorite Spotify playlist blaring, and smiles on, we were finally headed to the beach! As usual, I tried getting a few video snippets of our Jeep-karaoke session… Nathan really gets into Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” when the beat drops… I wanted to capture it, but he’s onto me now and as soon as my phone points in his direction, he puts on a stone face or pulls his hat down. *rolls eyes* No fun. I took a video anyway. He’d have to get over it… or I’ll have to be more subtle next time.
After a bunch of circling around the Isle of Palms, we all parked and trekked to the beach. For not exactly being a sunny day, it was still pretty crowded. Ick. People. Hahaha… just kidding. We DID try to find a more isolated spot though. And of course, the girls wanted to go right into the water. Which meant that I had to, too. I thought Nate would want to go in with us, but he stayed back a bit… and then left again. And was on his phone when we got there. That’s not like him. I was concerned that maybe something happened with work. Oh, please don’t make him have to go back in today… he seemed distracted.
Aria didn’t want me to put her down. Machaela wanted to go deeper into the ocean than where Aria was comfortable… I was torn. So I stayed back a little bit but made sure if there was an emergency, I’d be in lunging range… she wasn’t even that deep anyway, but my brain operates on perpetual Mom-mode whenever the girls are around. Nathan joined us for a few minutes and then left to go back up to where everyone was. Not gonna lie, I was a bit disgruntled because I really could’ve used the help. I wasn’t about to leave the girls down there alone and there’s no way they’d want to go back up to the towels so soon anyway. I don’t know how I hadn’t factored this dilemma into my expectations for the day hahaha.
After a while longer, I was able to convince them that drying off for a bit and getting a drink from the cooler was a good idea. As we walked up to where everyone else was, Denise said we should all go off and look for shells down the shore. Okay… my book can wait. You see, I just had a tiny bit of it left to read… and if you’re an avid reader, you’re probably familiar with that all-consuming feeling of being sooooooo close to finishing a book you’d been chipping away at for ages… I just wanted to get to the last page already so I could get it out of my mind and move on; the beach is usually the perfect spot for finishing novels.
I thought Nate was behind us, but when I turned around to talk to him, he was already headed back towards the other group of our friends… Okay? I guess he’s not looking for shells with us either. Denise said something about him going to set up the badminton net so we could play later. Okay. That made sense. The girls and I were really looking forward to it. I felt a bit guilty for being kind of upset about how distracted he seemed.
We strolled along for a while… seemingly farther and farther away from where we initially set up the umbrella. And I thought that I was big on walking the shore for shells, but the way Denise was going on about it was a whole different level. She seemed dead set on finding sand dollars to show the girls. It was sweet. Every time I mentioned about maybe heading back so we could all hang out together, she said that she needed to keep her promise to the girls. I couldn’t really argue with that…
Finally, she got a call and said that they finished setting up the net and were ready for a game of badminton… or frisbee… or whatever everyone wanted to play. Yes! It was perfect badminton weather. The sun was tucked behind the clouds instead of in our faces and the rain was holding off. Aria was covered in sand. I’m fairly certain she was even more sand than she was swimsuit. She ran off ahead of us. The closer we approached, the more confused I became… I didn’t see the badminton net anywhere… where in tarnation did they put it? Then, I remembered that I accidentally left the actual poles for the net part back at the house and felt really bad… of course they couldn’t have set it up… they didn’t have all of the pieces! *facepalm* … I felt bad that they must’ve spent all that time looking in vain while I was off gallivanting with the girls collecting shells. They didn’t seem phased though. Nate called me over to where he was and I saw a bouquet of red and white roses in the sand near the cooler.
I thought, “Oh wow… he’s really taking our “Reconnectiversary” to a whole nother level… and I didn’t even get anything to surprise him with… drat!” I was so confused. Our friends were standing around angled in our direction… even the girls stayed back a little bit. He reached down for the flowers and something else… an empty Corona bottle? I felt under-prepared and made a mental note to think of a way to try to make it up to him for going above and beyond for the anniversary of us reconnecting again… maybe a nice dinner? I honestly didn’t realize he’d make such a big to-do about it.
He told me to read the letter that was rolled up inside of the bottle… aweeee a message in a bottle! I didn’t realize that he wrote it on a scrap piece of paper, so I started to read the visible portion of text that was printed out on it… “Flex Login Enter Username???” He raised an eyebrow before realizing that I was reading the wrong side of the paper… “No, not THAT side… the other side!” We laughed. I felt silly. I was nervous and didn’t even quite understand why. I’m not much of a spotlight person, but I felt the heat of everyone looking at us as if knowing details that had yet to be revealed to me.
I started to read his remarkably legible handwriting… “Hello My Love, You’re most likely wondering why there is this message in a bottle for you…” Yes, yes I was wondering exactly that. [I’m not going to divulge everything that was written in the letter or even most of it, but I’ll share a few snippets. It was the sweetest thing I’d ever read from the sweetest man I’ve ever known.] As I read… “You and the girls mean everything to me.” … “You know better than anyone that sometimes a letter can explain things that we can’t in the moment…” He guided me closer and closer to the driftwood bench in the sand. [In the midst of it all, Machaela caught my attention to show me one of the shells she found, and Aria proudly showed off how covered in sand she was. I love them. Okay, back to the letter] … “We spend our whole lives looking for love. It took a while to look back at the 10-year-old me that told my mother ‘I’m going to marry that girl one day.’… … … I was right.” … … … “P.S. Will You?”
Is this…? Is he…?
As I lifted my eyes from the page, trying to keep my tears reined in, he got down on one knee in front of me and a heart that was drawn in the sand with “Will you marry me?” spelled out in seashells, God, the girls, our friends, and everybody else at the beach, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a little black velvet box—which he opened up to show the prettiest ring I’d ever seen, told me he wants to spend the rest of his life with us, and asked if I would marry him.
It took a moment to process what was happening… I was so overwhelmed with emotion I could barely speak, so I nodded—not wanting to keep him waiting… and said “Yes” while leaning in for a kiss. Then, I noticed a few of our other friends… the ones who were “busy” and “couldn’t join us” standing in the background holding cameras… it turns out that they had been there for hours before we arrived—hiding in the bushes with the bouquet of roses and their cameras (even to the point where they explained to the people nearby that they weren’t spying on them but were staying out of sight to be able to document their friends’ engagement) just so they could capture our special moment.
I couldn’t believe that everyone was in on it—even the girls! He had asked for their ‘blessing’ to propose to me… Machaela was even the one who hid the ring the whole time! My heart was overflowing… Hannah and Shasta spent hours crouched in the sand, Denise and Nick spent their own anniversary (yep, it was their anniversary that day!) helping out with our engagement, Heidi and Zac were gathering shells and keeping a lookout to make sure that the surprise didn’t get spoiled, Denise took a ton of pictures and a video from our perspective while distracting me long enough for everyone else to help stage the scene… and the girls kept the secret the whole time… how am I so lucky to be surrounded by this much love?
When I said “Yes,” I wasn’t just saying yes to being his fiancée. I said yes to our future… yes to our family… yes to the ups and downs and everything else that comes along with building and sharing a life together. While I didn’t get to finish reading the last chapter of my book during our time there, we started writing an even better one of our own. Ironically, its title couldn’t have been more appropriate: “The Best Yes”.
Kaleidoscopic Grace 