The Boy Who Wanted To Marry Me

Several months ago, I wrote a couple of posts – here and here – about men who restored my faith in, well, men. In those posts, I explained that I’ve had doubts in the past about men’s innate ability to love… like truly, madly, deeply (great movie, by the way) love. L.O.V.E. Oddly, these doubts have never extended to random, select men in my life, such as my dad or my husband or my Papi or Stanley Tucci.

Anyway, despite the revelations that prompted the posts earlier this year, I’ve been having a little crisis lately where my doubts have come creeping back in. It’s completely unfair. It’s heartless of me (there’s irony for you). There’s no reason for such a judgment.

This all was weighing on me until earlier today. Then… I remembered Dominick. Ah, Dominick, my romance from my last two summers of high school and the first man to ask me to marry him.

If my best friend or my sister or my mom read this, they’ll shake their heads in that way we women do when we’re feeling simultaneously exasperated and nostalgic. But they’ll hopefully also remember what an amazing young man Dominick was back then.

Dominick lived not far from Yonkers, I lived in southwestern Connecticut, and we met at the Jersey Shore. We hung out in a large group of kids from around the tri-state area who had gravitated toward each other upon arrival at the beach and who were relatively inseparable for the brief time we all spent at the Shore each summer.

Somehow, among all of these kids and all of the fun and craziness and distractions, Dominick was interested in me. Me! And boy did I like him. He was tall and lanky with the most beautiful smile and a sweet, tender blue-eyed gaze that simply emanated kindness. It was that kindness, that genuine consideration for others, that drew me to him. He was athletic and fun and a teenager through and through, but he also was sweet and gentle and caring beyond words. I was crushy beyond crushy. Serious puppy love. I was distraught when it was time to return home and beside-myself-excited when we returned to the Shore the next summer to find him and the rest of our crew already there and looking for us.

What I forgot about Dominick until this morning was that he asked me to marry him. It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t a “Someday I’m going to marry you.” It was an honest-to-goodness proposal of marriage. True, there was no ring involved, and the question was asked by phone, but he really did ask me to marry him when I was 17 and he was 18 (or was he 19?).

The ring I did not receive. Or have offered. Or ever see in real life.

Why, you may ask, would this simple act by a boy – because he really was more boy than man still – restore my faith in men?  There are a few reasons. First, more than the proposal itself, the memory of Dominick reminded me of what a beautiful soul that boy was, how selfless and thoughtful. Second, despite your initial thoughts about why a boy would propose marriage – yes, I can read your mind – there was no underlying motivation of the get-in-your-pants nature driving this.  Dominick proposed to me in winter, when we weren’t at the Shore. He lived at least an hour from me, and I wasn’t allowed to drive out of state to visit or meet up with him, so I pretty much never saw him aside from the week or two we would spend near Seaside Heights. So proposal or no proposal, he wasn’t gettin’ any. And… my family wasn’t scheduled to go back to the Shore the following summer. Finally, when I told Dominick I couldn’t marry him because I wanted to go to college, he offered to come with me and support me in whatever dream I wanted to pursue.  

Dominick and I stayed in touch here and there until I left for college, and then we fell out of touch for good.  For years, I kept a photo of him in my wallet (remember when we used to do that sort of thing?). When I was sad or lonely or stressed, I would look at his sweet face and would feel a sense of calm knowing someone so kind-hearted was out there in the world. Then, at some point the photo disappeared. Years later, my mother saw Dominick in a magazine article featuring his wife, who apparently is brilliant, and we were simply thrilled to see him looking well and happy.

So now it’s midnight, and tomorrow the world is supposed to end, according to several misinterpretations of the Mayan calendar. And if the world truly does end, at least I can feel some sense of relief that my faith in men has yet again been restored thanks to that boy who long ago offered to follow me anywhere, who told me he wanted to spend his life with me, and who made me feel truly, madly, deeply loved.

Best. Date. Ever.

If you’re an adult who has ever been on a date in your life, you can probably think of one date that stands out above the others as “the best date ever.” Perhaps it was a special moment – first “I love you “ or marriage proposal – with the man or woman you love most in the world. Maybe it was a first date that held amazing promise; maybe it was an experience that proved the other person really “got” you and clearly had listened and learned about what mattered to you.

Tonight, I want to share my best date ever. Because it made me feel special. Because it warmed my heart then and it warms my heart even today, 23 years (ugh!) and innumerable dates later. And I hope experiencing it in your imagination gives you a smile.

I don’t remember the day of the week on which my best date ever happened. I do know that it was late in the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, and it was a warm, sunny day.

It was already an odd day, because I was joyfully spending the day cleaning my room. There are two points that are strange about that. First, I was cleaning my room. I was not an instinctively neat child, so the fact that I was cleaning my room of my own accord – and doing so quite happily – was just odd. Really odd. Second, and you likely have to be from the northeast to understand this, I was happily cleaning my upstairs bedroom during a warm summer day. You see, in the northeast, central air conditioning is not the norm, and as most of us know, heat rises. As in, into upstairs rooms. I think I may have had one of our very few, very precious window air conditioning units in my bedroom, but even so, spending time upstairs on a hot summer day in the northeast is not something that is considered desirable.

So there I was, happily cleaning the bugs out of my ceiling light (no joke), when my mom yelled up that a friend had stopped by and was coming upstairs.  I turned to see my friend B walk into my room. 

Let me give you quick insight into B.  B was a year younger than I, and not someone I hung out with a ton, but definitely someone I counted as a friend.  He and I were in chorus and drama together – gotta love a boy who likes to sing and can get into the whole drama thing – and we spent time in similar circles. Not that I had a circle. But that’s for another post someday.  The short is that while we were friends, he wasn’t someone who typically came to my house, so I was pleasantly surprised to see him, and a bit bewildered.

B and I chatted for a short bit, and then he asked me to take a drive with him, which I accepted quite happily.

We drove up into the hills in our medium-sized town, and he eventually turned onto an unpaved driveway that led to an open hilltop which was clearly being prepped for major construction.  On that day it was still grassy and open and pastoral.  The day, as I said, was sunny and warm, but not hot, so the setting was simply lovely.

B opened up the back of his truck and asked me to sit on the open back gate, which I did.  I don’t recall what we talked about, but I remember that while we chatted, he wove me a crown of white flowers and gently placed it on my head. If you’re a woman, have you ever had a man make you a crown of flowers? It was so unexpected, so completely sweet… it is an understatement to say that it made me feel immensely special.

No, this is not me.
Photo thanks to theflowerdrum.blogspot.com.

But that’s not all. After he did that, he sang Elton John’s “Your Song” to me. Are you familiar with this song? Because if not, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTa8U0Wa0q8

You know the bit in “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” where the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes? That’s how my heart felt. All the clichés were alive that afternoon. My heart swelled. My heart sang. I felt like I might cry and I felt like I could fly.

When the song was finished… well, I don’t remember if he kissed me. I don’t remember if we talked any more. I just know that after a bit, B drove me home, and I didn’t see him again until school started. We never “went out” and we never had another date. I don’t know if he wanted to be more than friends after that or if it was an impulse on a lovely afternoon.

I’ve fallen in love a couple of times in the many years since that day. I’ve had some truly incredible dates and experiences. And I’ve been fortunate to have been made to feel honestly, deeply loved. And… there is something about that late summer afternoon before my senior year of high school still stands out as the most precious “date” of my entire life, the time that touched my heart in a way that I don’t think will ever be equaled.

How about you? Is there a date or experience that stands out above the rest?