Roses and a progressive proposal

Roses. This is a true story told in 10 minutes in response to kathryn's wedneday writing essentials prompt.

In 1996, I was at a writing retreat in one of the most scenic spots along Lake Superior’s North Shore in Minnesota when my birthday arrived quietly and unannounced. I shared a lodge with three other women writers whom I rarely saw because we kept silence from bed time till supper time. The focus of the retreat was to write and write we did. For this purpose we’d each been assigned our own writing shed with either a view of the lake or a view of the woods depending on the view we had from our rooms. If you had a lake view, you got a woods shed and vice-versa. I worked so diligently that I completed the first draft of my book The Scent of God in two weeks while there, though it took me another 8 years of rewrites to shape it.

It was early October and the maples and aspen were flaming on the hillsides and I decided, that as it was my birthday, I needed to head into those hills. Along the North Shore of Lake Superior, we have in those hills one of the best hiking trails in the nation: The Superior Hiking Trail. I hiked to Carlton Peak, a stone mountain that grants the hiker a spectacular view of the surrounding landscape – the burgundy and gold and tangerine of the forests punctuated by the almost black spruce and pine – and the blue, blue lake beyond. From there I descended to the Temperance River which rushes through spectacular gorges in foaming cascades of water.

When I arrived back at the Lodge, invigorated, stunned with the beauty I'd just seen, I saw on the lodge dining table a large bouquet of roses around which were propped 3 cards addressed to me. How lovely, I thought, one of the other writers must have done this for me. Each card was numbered . . . the first was addressed to “my dearest and best friend,” and inside the simple message, “will you marry me?.” The second card was addressed to “the love of my life,” and contained another marriage proposal. The third card was addressed to “my precious wife,” with a final proposal to marry the sender.

Bill had been asking me to marry him for several years but I didn’t want to remarry. I loved him but was happy remaining single. This progressive proposal, however, turned the tide. As there were no phones at the lodge, I ran the two miles to the nearest resort, phoned Bill, got his answering machine and said, “Yes!” Disappointed I hadn’t been able to reach him, I returned to the lodge where I learned that because delivery trucks were not allowed down the retreat’s driveway, the roses had to be picked up at the local hardware store. The cards had been retreived by the caretaker at the Post Office.

The next morning I hastened back to the resort to check my answering machine, certain that Bill would have left me a radiantly joyful response to my acceptance. No messages!

On my return home at the end of the retreat, I learned that Bill had been so excited by my acceptance that he invited his consulting crew out to dinner where they celebrated his engagement.  We’ve been blissfully married ever since.