On the Nineteenth Day: Nineteen Golden Rings!!

In the fall of our last year of college, Paul asked me to marry him as we sat on the porch of the main building situated in view of New York City, some thirty miles south. Although He didn't have a diamond to give me at that time, we told our friends and family that we were engaged anyway and put up with the countless excited requests to see the ring.

I flew south to Florida for Christmas a few months later and he drove north to spent the holidays at his home in Endwell, New York. During those three weeks apart, Paul worked night shift at IBM, a sacrifice in many ways, but particularly so as it messed with his sleep schedule, making his holiday a little lonely and dull.

I flew back to New York the day before spring semester classes began, and Paul, eager to pick me up, promised to be waiting at the gate (that was possible in 1974). When my flight arrived into the city, there was no Paul to greet me. So I waited. And waited. And waited. Communication being what it was in 1974, I used a pay phone* to call my mother in Florida who called Paul's mother in New York, who called Paul's sister in Florida, all trying to find out where Paul might be. As I waited, I watched the airport entrance from a nearby window, hoping that each white car I saw driving over the bridge was Paul's. Finally, three hours later, I saw him walking towards me, obviously deeply upset. I had flown into JFK International and he had been waiting at LaGuardia.

Since I had been scheduled to arrive in the late afternoon, our evening fine dining plan became a late-night hamburger. As we waited for our dinner, we got caught up a little--figured out how he had been at LaGuardia instead of Kennedy, shared the conversations we each had had with multiple family members from multiple pay phones, and learned what we each had received from Santa. We both agreed that those three hours of frantic searching and waiting seemed about as long as the three weeks separation during Christmas.

Feeling finally calm, happy and full as we finished our hamburgers, Paul reached into his pocket and produced a little box and I opened a diamond ring. Since he had already asked me to marry him, there was no anxiety concerning whether or not I would say yes. And I repeated my yes despite the frantic three hour wait at the airport.

That may have been the happiest Christmas of my life--mainly because of all the additional happy Christmases that have resulted.