I had always known I was going to marry this woman who came into my life the tail end of my college journey. We hit a few rocks coming to terms with the terrifying reality of being a young person out in the world but once we learned how to ride the swells, the waters seemed to calm, and I knew it was time to take that next step in adulthood.
The first thing I had to do was get her father’s permission. I’m a traditionalist and I had a pretty good relationship with him so I knew he would oblige me. Even so, I was quite nervous. Some guys are fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to live close to their future father-in-law. Mine was a thousand miles away so a phone conversation would have to do. I didn’t want my future wife to know what I was doing so I stole her phone and got his number. When he picked up on the other end I lost my train of thought and instead of asking if I could marry his daughter, I asked him if he would marry me. A joke was born that will never die, but in the end, he said “yes”.
The next step was to get a ring. I was a poor graduate student at the time but luckily my Grandmother had saved her mother’s engagement ring for this occasion. The problem with this is that my wife is petite and apparently my great grandmother had bratwurst for fingers. At this point in the game, I had received many ‘hints’ as to what a possible, acceptable, engagement ring should look like, on the off chance I was ever ‘looking’ for one. And if there is one thing I have learned about jewelry it is to always involve the person that is going to wear it. Otherwise, you’re better off throwing your money in an old ring box in the back of a closet never again to see the light of day.
Now it was time to plan out how I would actually propose. I wanted to do something romantic but not something cliche. Since we went to Michigan every summer I thought the perfect place would be on one of the rivers we would often canoe. I had dreams of swimming down to the bottom of the river and coming up and saying something lame like, “look what I found down here”, then presenting the ring or something to that effect.
We made it up to Michigan and set off for our canoe trip with our dog, Tattnall, a rambunctious Boxer. I had the ring tied up in some latex surgical gloves with air blown in just in case we capsized, that way the ring would float. All was going according to plan until we got to the boat launch and I stuck my bare foot in the water. The thing about Michigan water is either its perfect, or it feels like it just came off of a glacier. This year was the latter and there was absolutely no way I was going to swim in water that cold. I am a thin-blooded southerner, water that cold would kill me instantly.
Forced to improvise, I found an opportunity when we pulled the boat over on a sandy shore by a tall cliff to take our dog for a walk. We hiked up the cliff, maybe fifty or so feet above the water, and walked around. There were wild raspberries growing, birds chirping, a gentle breeze. This was going to be like in a movie. I excused myself for a moment because I needed to get the ring out of the glove. The problem there is I tied it up so well it took me a good ten minutes and the sacrificing of both of my thumbnails to get it out. I feared my wife was getting suspicious so I decided to pull the trigger when I came back.
By a patch of wild raspberries, I got down on one knee and before I could get the words out of my mouth my wife shrieked in excitement so loud that it startled our dog who was rummaging around on the cliffside. He got excited and started running, lost his grip, fell off the cliff, and into the river below. Boxer’s are not the world’s greatest breed for swimming. My wife ran after him in a panic. I grabbed the ring and followed. As she made her way down the cliffside, barefoot, she stepped on a dead branch and in doing so impaled the underside of her foot with a small offshoot that broke off flush with the skin.
She started screaming. I ran after the dog and got him out. She’s screaming and yelling and crying. This thing is bleeding all over the place. She tried to pull it out. Couldn’t do it. I tried but my thumbnails were gone. All of a sudden a stout middle-aged woman yells from the clifftop to see if everything was ok. She had been hiking and heard the screams. I explained what happened and asked if she had a knife. We were at least five miles from our destination and that thing had to come out. The hiker looks at me and says, “No, I don’t have a knife...But I do got a good pair of teeth.”
My wife gave me a look that I will never forget. A look that said she would rather lose her leg before she’d have some woman bite a stick out of her foot. I politely told the lady no thank you and she went on her way. If you do not know my wife you should know she is rather proper and composed even when she is alone. So what happened next was quite incredible. Knowing the stick needed to come out of her foot or risk further damage and suffering, in a moment of pure adrenaline, she grabbed hard on to her foot, raised it up, and bit the stick right out, which ended up being an inch and a half long.
To keep the swelling and bleeding down, the rest of the trip she sat in the front of the canoe with her foot dangling in the arctic water. I paddled us all the way back. Honestly, I am not sure if she ever agreed to marry me or not. All I know is that as we silently glided down the river I noticed she was wearing the ring. I’ll never forget how happy I was that day. The day that I promised to be a stick in her foot for the rest of our lives.