Marriage Proposal Gone Wrong

One thing led to another and a wedding proposal gone wrong entered the picture. In the beginning, when I first met my husband, Peter, we began a cohabitation that lasted a number of years. We couldn't stand to be apart, but seeing each other always entailed a one hour drive.

We took turns going back and forth, and despite the beautiful autumn scenery, all of the driving got old fast.

We had to face the facts and get practical about our wildfire love affair. One of the pragmatic factors was consideration for the relationship with my religious family. I knew I would catch a lot of flack, if we didn't bind the ties with holy matrimony.

Even though I had almost become a crusty old bachelorette, I couldn't help myself. The mind said one thing, while I quickly understood what the expression of being swept away really meant.

Three weeks after our first date, I moved my toothbrush in. Later on came the whole periphery of furniture, appliances, rock collections and more.

One of the first things I learned about my husband-to-be is that he was a typical Gemini. Charming as all get out, he was really a trickster at times.

A fall from grace began early on when Peter's ex wife started harassing us on the phone and during the visitation exchanges with his two boys.

She had purchased a Lincoln Continental with her proceeds of their divorce. It looked like a battering ram, and she used the powerful engine to spin out and hurl gravel everywhere including on the kids.

Without any more gruesome details, I'll move on to the marriage proposal gone wrong. All a sudden, it simply disappeared.

Thoughts of matrimony quickly faded into the background after reality hit hard. He had lived through a fifteen year marriage and became surrounded with continual frenetic hostility. I simply didn't have the heart to push the issue of making it legal between the two of us.

One year passed by, and I clearly understood that what he had gone through could give any man permanently "cold feet." Another year passed by, then another and another. The word marriage never came up, but I understood.

In the beginning, Peter had said that we would get married when his parents returned from their Florida snowbird migration. After numerous migrations, we still had never tied the knot.

Finally, one morning while having coffee and sparring with our rapier like wits, or lack thereof, I queried about the absence of our marriage plans.

"Honesty isn't really your forte, is it?" I asked him jokingly.

"What do you mean?" he asked with an unassuming look on his face.

"We were supposed to be married by now, remember?"

"Oh, that. Well, I didn't say what year it would be."

A small amount of time went by, and soon we were standing outside the municipal hall waiting for the justice of the peace. I brushed off the shoulders of Pete's only suit as dusty poufs floated like phantoms in the late afternoon shadows. Our small wedding party laughed uproariously.

When the JP arrived, we made our vows, and corrected the wedding proposal gone wrong. That was twenty wonderful years of marriage ago.