a proposal

Today Fellow and I took possession of our house on Bowen. We drove over on an early morning ferry with one of our children and our general contractor friend, Pete, our vehicles filled with paint samples, tools, tiles, a portable garage and the like. The house was left littered with bad art, old furniture, cobwebs, chipped crockery and black pots, thin linens and a macrame owl. While the men unloaded flooring and I painted possible colours on the wall. One of our kids grabbed a garbage bag and collected everything ugly. We worked all morning and then had our first meal out on the balcony. The fair skinned Fellow and one of our kids suffered under the sun, while I basked and bragged about my Italian skin never needing sunscreen.

With my hair up in a scraggly pony, my painting pants and old t-shirt on, and my face puffy with morning and bare of any make up, my Fellow said, “You just look gorgeous in anything, don’t you? Hey, let’s take a break and go for a stroll through our garden together”.

What a nice idea. We went through the rows and I pointed out the peonies and clematis, the pink flowered strawberry plants and the blueberries and roses. He nodded and hummed and sat me down on the rock lined terraced bed and we looked out at the ocean together and listened to the birds, holding hands in the peaceful vastness of our view. Then, it suddenly hit me what he might be working up the nerve to do and sure enough, he got down on one knee in the middle of the garden and said with a blush and a bit of a stammer, “Lucia, I love you and I would be honoured if you would be my wife.” I kissed him and said “yes” and he said, “I figured.” Then I asked, “What about the kids, have they both been asked how they feel?” And he said, “Yes, and I got their blessing.” And then I heard a whoop and a holler over the trees! I looked up: one of the kids is hanging their head over the balcony, having heard everything, grinning ear to ear with those marvellous dimples. “Good job!” The child whooped. I smiled upside down for a good long while. We all met up at the side of the house and had a group hug.

Then we got back to work.

It seems so entirely appropriate that I was proposed to in my scrubbies among the ground cover, peonies and ivy, under the huge fir, on our land. This is our home. This is our love. This is our perennial garden.