The Road to Happiness

Nerves were the first emotion felt on my road to happiness. When I refer to this road, I really mean the highway up to Bayfield where I proposed to my girlfriend. The first step was asking her farther for his permission. As I sat across the kitchen table from what I hoped to be my future father in law, nerves ran through my body. Would he say yes? Would she even say yes? I was a ball of emotions and couldn’t keep still while I stumbled to get the words out. After getting his full permission to ask her, it was time to get the ring. She had once explained what she liked in jewelry, but I thought it wise to bring her best friend of 20 years along for the trip. With the ring in my hand and anxiety the big day was approaching.

I had planned this for a week and my girlfriend had absolutely no idea what was coming. When she got home from a long day of school it would be nice to describe her mood as cranky. It was a Thursday night and we both had Friday off, I wanted to be spontaneous. My girlfriend doesn’t do well with spontaneous. I asked her if she wanted to go out to dinner as she insisted she was to tired and wanted to make grilled cheese. It took about a half hour to convince her to get ready and go out with me.  Then came the next challenge.

My girlfriend and I spend our summers camping in Bayfield, and we have a favourite restaurant by the beach where we love to go and then walk the beach. This is where I always knew I wanted to purpose, being January I had a hard time convincing her to take a road trip. She was dead set against the idea of going up there, and I had to trick her into going by telling her the lake would be frozen. She insisted I was wrong but she had never seen a lake in the winter and was intrigued and fooled in to the road trip.

On the long drive up to Bayfield I had the ring in the pocket of my jacket and didn’t want her to find it, I was too nervous to take my coat off, and I hate being hot. My girlfriend cranked the heat while insisting I take off my jacket, as I pretended I was cold I was actually sweating a lot. We joked and had a good drive and I was so nervous the whole way.

We finally got to Bayfield and had dinner at our restaurant and then I convinced her to go down to the beach to see if the lake was frozen, of course it wasn’t. I then insisted that we walk the beach, but she claimed it was too dark and she was scared, she even made a reference to criminal minds that at the time really made me mad. As we walked down the doc I planned to make it to the end but nerves got the best of me and I got down on my knee and asked her to marry me...

She replied with a slap to my shoulder and a “stop joking jerk not funny”. It was dark and she couldn’t see the ring in my hand and thought I was joking. As I stood there shaking I finally made her realise I was serious, and she said yes.

The road to happiness was long and full of anxiety, but it sure makes for a great story we can on day tell our children.