2006-04-17 || 4:44 p.m.

|| this is what it feels like to get engaged. ||

it's easy to keep it in the realm of wearing your communion dress slip on your head and doing the step-together step-together walk down the sidewalk with a cereal-box prize ring to make it official until your dad starts to cry on the phone. "we're really happy for you," he says in between pauses that make you imagine him wiping at his eyes. "we're proud to have him as part of the family." and then you start to get choked up, having felt surprised that you didn't cry at all a little earlier when it was actually happening, when he asked and you accepted. you were in your pajamas. he was sitting on the couch and you made him say it three times because this is what you will remember when you're old, this is the story you will tell your kids. "it was easter sunday," you will say. "i was sitting on the floor in my pajamas opening easter eggs and the fifth one wasn't filled with candy. there was a ring in it and i wasn't sure what to say. i looked at it for a few seconds, sitting there in a yellow plastic egg, and then he asked from his spot on the couch in the joke voice he always uses, even for the important things."

you don't really wear jewelry so it's hard to get used to. your finger feels different, which makes your hand feel different, which makes you hold your whole body differently, somehow more grown up. regal, even. you go to the library and thumb through pages and keep catching glimpses of it in your peripheral vision. you go to the goodwill and look through the racks and your hand rests on an old-lady coat. you hold it there for a second to look at it and the ring, and when you pass by the mirror in ladies pants you catch a look at your face just in case you can tell a difference.

you sit in a bar that night across from your betrothed, who has gotten somewhat intoxicated on his regular whiskeys with a bar back. you keep looking at each other and shaking your heads and try to organize the next months' sequence of events. you feel horribly overwhelmed. you feel like a kid in grown-up clothes. you hold your hand on your lap under the table and keep turning the ring on your finger around and around, like if you can screw it on to fit tight it will make it seem more real. he almost starts crying talking about how much he loves you. you want to hold his face in your hands and when you grab for his hand across the table you look at it closely this time. this is the hand that will hold yours forever. this is the fool who's willing to spend eternity with you. and when you think about it you know it couldn't have happened any other way.

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