The Proposal
It’s been a few days now, so I figure it’s time to get this down. First off, thanks to everyone for the well wishes and congratulations. I really appreciate all of your support and couldn’t be happier!
And of course, everyone wants to hear the story of how it all happened (especially since it did not go according to plan), so here it is. Just as a warning, this might occasionally slip into “romantic” stuff. I bet if I was just seeing this in my news reader, I would probably skip it…
Anyway, my original plan was to arrive in Provo around 7:30 PM and take care of things by around 8:30 PM. Well, of course my flight from Denver to Salt Lake City was delayed, so I didn’t land until around 7:00 PM. I picked up my car and headed down to Provo to find her. As an aside, I must say that my rental experience with Alamo was MUCH better than Hertz. Very quick service, free upgraded car, and no trying to scare me into getting insurance.
Well, Mariam wasn’t at her apartment. This didn’t surprise me too much, since she had mentioned she might go out with a friend that night. I had thought ahead to contact the friend so I had her phone number, but when I called, she said she wasn’t with Mariam. She told me Mariam had mentioned something about a ward activity. Mariam wasn’t picking up her phone, so I had to start searching. None of the apartments in her building had any fliers about an activity on their doors, so my next best guess was some big event going on at the Wilkinson Center on campus.
As I was walking up to campus, I was coming up with the ways I would convince the BYUSA people to let me inside without a BYU ID card. Turns out I didn’t have to try, since I was able to see in through the doors enough to see she wasn’t there.
Everyone keep a lookout for a tall brunette Latina woman. She’s not at her apartment nor the Wilk…
I headed back to her apartment and tried knocking again, and this time her roommate was there. She told me she was at a stake activity that was somewhere near Payson, UT (a bit under 30 minutes south of Provo). Mariam finally returned my calls, and she confirmed that that is where she was. I didn’t want to spoil my surprise, so I just pretended I was at home and asked her to call me when she was done. Her roommate wasn’t sure where the activity was, but thankfully some people walking into the apartment building had a flier to give me.
Of course, the address on the flier didn’t come up in a Google Maps search. So I just started driving south. I have yet to mention that the weather was somewhat crappy, with quite a bit of snow falling. Everyone was going around 40 MPH on the interstate, so getting down to the exit took longer than I had wanted. With no map to help me and limited visibility, I drove past the street I needed to pass twice.
Once I finally figured it out, the roads weren’t any better and people were going even slower. I started getting close to the address and the road turned into an incline. All of the cars in front of my began stopping and a long line of cars coming the other direction was inching it’s way down the hill. Still dunno why everyone was stopped, but the only thing I could think was “Gosh, the roads aren’t that bad.” Well, I ended up sitting there for about ten minutes before figuring Mariam was in one of those cars coming down the hill, so I turned around and started heading back to Provo to meet her when she got home.
Not being one who gives up easily however, I wanted to just double check. So all the driving back to the interstate, I was calling her phone. After about 30 calls, she finally picked up (I think the #1 thing on our wedding gift registry is a phone Mariam can actually hear while it’s in her pocket). She told me she was actually still in the parking lot of the place and about 200 cars were lined up trying to get out of the parking lot. She figured it would be at least an hour by the time she got out of there. This was not an acceptable solution.
I told her to just call me when she was home (still trying to keep my secret), and I turned back around, ready to drive any stupid drivers off the side of the road if needs be just to get to where she was. I got to the final turn off to the parking lot, which was an uphill narrow road. A couple of cars coming the other way started blinking there brights at me, so I stopped.
A very excited dude came running up to my car yelling something about having 400 people stuck in a parking lot and saying I couldn’t go any further. I might have argued with him, but stopping on the snowy road while on the incline left me with no traction to go up, so my only option was to turn around and go back down. As I started driving back to the end of the road, the guy started yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs that I needed to slow down because the road was so slippery. I should have told him to go back to the OC. I made it to the bottom of the hill without incident.
Anyway, being turned around by the “bro” in his first snowstorm was the final straw for me, so I called Mariam and said “Ok, I am here, I have come to rescue you, walk down to the bottom of the road and I will be waiting for you.” Took her a few seconds to realize what was going on, but then her and her friend started coming down the road. This is when I first checked my phone to see that everyone was congratulating me because this had posted.
omg it did not all go according to plan!!!!! sitting on the side of the road in elk ridge Utah!!!!!
this will make a great blog post.
It was definitely a relief to finally see her and have her next to me. Of course, getting back to Provo took forever and a day. The snow had stopped and the roads were slight damp and slushy in places, yet everyone was still driving like molasses in February. We FINALLY got back to Provo around 11:30 and dropped off Mariam’s friend.
found her, alive in Provo, still haven’t given her the ring…
Of course by this time I am starting to get sleepy, but I need to get it taken care of that night, so I finally set my plan in motion. Before we go on, we need to take a short trip (or two) down history lane…
I spent the beginning half of the summer of 2007 in Japan. For the month of June, I was staying with a really cool elderly couple, Nobuomi and Yoshie. Nobuomi was one of those old men always cracking jokes even if no one laughs, and Yoshie and I spent many evenings together enjoying Japanese t.v. dramas such as 冗談じゃない！. Anyway, Nobuomi spent one evening showing me how to make nesting origami boxes similar to this. As I was folding these boxes, I thought how great they would be for giving a girl some sort of gift…
Fast forward two and half years to last October. I flew out to Utah for General Conference and to celebrate Mariam’s birthday a bit early. My gift for her was a bunch of these little boxes with a love note written on each piece of paper, and then inside the smallest box, a promise ring. I thought it was a pretty sweet idea, and I think she liked it too.
Ok, now getting back to present day! We finally got to her apartment and I told her I was hungry so she made me something to eat. After I had eaten, I told her I had something to give her, so I pulled out another set of the origami boxes just like I had given to her before. She opened it up, and inside was… a little clay heart I had painted with our initials on it. She was expecting the proposal, so I thought I would tease her a bit with that. I could tell she was half disappointed but also half relieved that I didn’t use the exact method as before to propose.
By now it’s almost four hours later than I had hoped to pop the question, but there was no stopping now. I told her that we should go out and play in the snow. She agreed.
How about some more backstory? And a also a quick digression… :D
Mariam and I first met at Wendy’s. Well, more like walking with a couple of friends to Wendy’s, but standing in line to order food was the first time I actually had the courage to look over at the beautiful woman whose presence I couldn’t believe I was in. So the original plan was to take her to Wendy’s before proposing to bring things kind of full circle, but it was too late by then, so sadly that part of the plan got nixed.
Anyway, Mariam always tells me that her favorite date (also the first time I got to hold her hand!) was going out to play in the snow on the fields next to Wyview. We made snow angels, wrote each other messages in the snow, and gave each other white washes. Good times.
So, I figured if that was her favorite date, we should do it again. This is finally when I realized that the snow that caused me so much agony a few hours earlier was actually a blessing. The field was covered in a beautiful layer of fluffy, pristine snow. We ran out and had our date all over again. Snow angels, white washes, and a few snowballs.
I started writing a message in the snow and told her not to look until I was done. It said “Kiss Me”, which she did, so that was cool. Then it was her turn, so she wrote “TKM”, which is apparently how all of the cool kids write “I love you” down in Mexico these days.
Then it was my turn, so I wrote my message while she closed her eyes. When I was finished, I told her to look. It said “Marry Me”. She turned back to me and I got on my knee, pulled out the ring, and told her I loved her, I wanted to be with her forever, and asked her if she would marry me. She then started saying something about loving me too, blah blah, and I was like, “Wait, are you going to say yes or not?” She laughed and said yes. Kissing, hugging, putting on the ring, more of the kissing and hugging. It was good.
As we were walking back to the car, I pulled us both into the snow just for good measure.
And that’s how it happened.