A few hours later, we were in our room at a little B&B; near downtown, sipping Santa Cruz Mountain wines and getting ready to go to dinner. And we were lying on the bed and talking and he was grinning like a mad fool and when I asked him why, he pulled a ring out of his pocket and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him.

Apparently I met this questions with numerous expletives that I won’t repeat here, but a rated G translation would simply be, “really?” And apparently he actually said the words – he asked me to marry him – but I apparently went deaf and blind for about ten minutes as I couldn’t stop laughing and bawling. I think, somewhere in there, he heard my “yes”, which I probably repeated a hundred times.

I don’t know if everyone’s struggle to find love was as wretched and theatrical as my struggle. I’ve made so many bad choices, gone down so many stupid roads, sacrificed myself again and again and then chose solitude to keep from choosing badly yet again. And then, here comes this prince of a man, someone so thoughtful and kind and smart and funny and weird that every day, I try to be a better person, simply to deserve him. And he decides that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. Me, with my madness, and neuroses, and bull-headed crazy and need to fold and organize socks and to spend hours making tomato sauce and who hates televised sports and he loves me anyway and I don’t doubt him for a minute. And I wonder, how to hold onto this joy? How to feel a little bit of this, every day, for the rest of my life? And the only answer I know is to be the best woman I possibly can be, so maybe I’ll be lucky enough to keep him around.

I was the happiest I’d ever been even before he asked me to be his wife.

And, plus? He gave me the most beautiful ring in the history of beautiful rings. I’m assuming all newly betrothed women feel this way, and if that is so, then there is a heck of a lot more joy in the world than is reported in the newspapers.