First Romantic Proposal of the Year
Sunday, January 8, 2006
[6:47am] Collette was awakened that cold Sunday morning to reports on the radio of a 6.7 (which was later amended to a 6.9) magnitude earthquake in Athens. It had shaken the entire country, as well as Crete, and had been felt as far away as Cairo and the Middle East. While in the shower, she prayed (almost unconsciously at first, it seemed) that the people of Greece and Crete would be shown God’s “grace, mercy, justice, holiness, sovereignty, and goodness…” And very untactfully, she wondered if the Parthenon was still standing. There had been no immediate reports of damage or casualties. Fortunately, the quake struck on a Sunday afternoon, which meant that more families would be together, and fewer people would be running around on business errands. Surely new reports would soon follow. Collette was surprised, listening more and more to Pastor Marshall’s sermons on Revelations, that so many people were predicting the end of the world, because of all the natural disasters which had recently taken place. Surely, God’s hand was upon all such things, using them to His glory and to make Himself known to His people. But also, such disasters were natural cycles of the earth, and as the Scriptures said (in the end times, which had been taking place for over two thousand years), such things would take place, as wars, famines, etc. It was nothing new.
Meanwhile, Saturday evening had been spent for about an hour at the coffee shop. Joseph the blue-eyed was serving coffee and the joint soon filled up, so that OLeif, Collette, and Molly were confined to the back couch while Oleif continued to draw more monsters on his drawing tablet. His first had been named “Rupert” and was a smashing success amongst the younger ones. Collette sat on the floor there, the dark red of her tea settled on a saucer on the colored red, yellow, and brown patchwork of the rug. On the opposite couch sat a lady next to her lime-green coat. She seemed to smile all the time, even when she wasn’t really smiling.
As they sat there, Collette added anniversary and wedding dates to her calendar for 2006. She was reminded, while doing so, of the much-used bridesmaid dresses from her own wedding (the deep sapphire blue) which had been used in three weddings, a madrigal dinner, and a voice recital – to date.
But soon, Curly was dropped off (having decided not to attend the bluegrass festival). Joe, who was having “a rotten egg of a day” (according to himself, via Rose) and who had been at work from ten till six, did not have a ride. Rose was at the movies with Annamaria and Lollipop. No one had apparently invited Wally and Starr, and Magnus also did not show. But shortly later, Justus Orange swept inside, trailed by Evrain and Dr. E. (an old acquaintance from the choir days, although he was now attending Fort Zumwalt South, as a senior). After ordering coffees to go, they all headed back to the apartment.
There, Justus was pleased to find the Bartender’s Pocket Guide sitting there on OLeif’s bookshelf.
“I would like to read this just in my quest to be a more well-rounded person,” he said, preparing to read the introduction.
Meanwhile, several “bad” jokes were passed around as was only to be expected of a group of five guys and only two girls. And as this happened, Justus continued to read aloud a chapter on “how to deal with drunk customers,” while OLeif began to design a new green monster.
Later, Evrain began talking about his work with DMR (Mr. Milk’s catering service):
“Yeah, once at this house party, there were these Cardinals there and everything…”
“Oh, I thought you meant, as in the Catholic church,” Collette said.
“Yeah, I did too,” OLeif chuckled, ‘Hello, holy father.”
“Yes, all the potpourri were there…” Curly attempted another bad joke.
On the way back to drop off Molly, OLeif asked her how school had been going, her first three days back.
“It was pretty good, I guess,” Molly sighed, “Yeah, so a guy asked me to the movies. And I said no. And he was like ‘why?’ And I said because he had cooties. It was the best turn-down ever. I was totally proud of myself for coming up with that.”
“You should have come up with something completely original,” OLeif said, swinging onto Willott. “You should have told him it was because your third uncle… stole from your great grandfather’s general store.”
And that was their Saturday evening…
Sunday, other things were afoot. Fran announced from the pulpit, at Judah’s request:
“And so, Judah, do I take it to understand correctly that Miss Truitt has consented to become Mrs. Rye?”
General “oohs” and applause.
Beforehand, Linnea had walked into Sunday School followed by Rose:
“I threw up four times last night!” Linnea announced almost proudly.
“Yeah, um, Linnea can’t have tacos anymore,” Rose said sheepishly.
Meanwhile, John Smith was talking about how he had knocked out his sister’s tooth with a swing:
“And it went BOOM! And the tooth came out – she never found it.”
During the lesson, OLeif was commenting on the manger:
“It’s kind of like a big cereal bowl for a horse.”
Giggles.
“There was no milk in it though,” John Smith said, quite seriously.
Before the worship service, Collette looked up to see a group of kids huddled around OLeif who was looking up Luther’s famous insults towards Erasmus in Bondage of the Will (i.e. when Luther referred to Erasmus’ writings as dung served on a silver platter).
And somewhere during the sermon, Carrie began drawing a cartoon of some goon arriving in Egypt on a camel. Later, Collette realized (through the aid of Carrie’s added names and arrows) that the ‘goon’ was Carrie herself, being greeted by pyramids, the Red Sea, and a ‘hot Arab.’
Back at the house for lunch, Carrie shared her new plans of traveling to North Africa in lieu of Egypt, on a tour. There was laughter over the usual – Michael Buble, one of Ernest’s favorite bands whose music video included “dancing in the backyard,” Butterfinger cake, and whatever else happened to seem funny or worth discussing at the time. OLeif and Collette then left the family (Mom and Dad to a nap, the girls to “Donald Duck,” and the boys to their airsoft gun tournament). They hurried over to the Silverspoon’s for a short time with Agathe-Newt Saga (a missionary to China involved in language studies) and another young couple from their church with two young kids. And it was soon time to head off to youth in the balmy afternoon breezes. There, it was not long before the singing was finished, and Madge called out to Judah:
“Spill it! Spill it!”
And so he did, all in good time.
He sat down in the table facing the youth, which included that fine evening: Bob and Madge Wheels, Jimmy Saint, OLeif and Collette, Joe and Rose, Augustus Honey, Magnus, Susie Popples, Boy, Molly, and Samantha.
“Well…” he sighed almost dreamily. “We first went to California, and had a good time there, meeting all her family… Her sister…”
“The one who studies something?” Madge asked.
“Yes – banana weevils… .Just got back from Costa Rica…”
“Banana weevils! Ha ha ha!”
“Who was this? Her cousin?” One of the girls inquired, not having heard the first time.
“Her sister, actually…”
“I’d rather meet her cousin.” Augustus said.
“What an interesting thing to study…” Madge commented.
“How much does she make doing that?” Joe asked.
“Anyway,” Judah continued despite the constant chatter. “So I talked with Evangel’s dad for four days, asking permission to marry her.”
Whoops.
“Four days!”
“And at the end of that, he told me that he might consider blessing our marriage.”
“Ooooohs,” Laughter.
“So we had a great week, did a lot of fun things. And then at the end of that, when her dad was dropping us off at the rental car place for us to drive back to the airport, he said that he had already told Evangel that he and her mother had given their blessing to us.”
“Ha ha!”
“And so we flew back here and Tuesday through Thursday we were just really busy getting a lot of things together and then Evangel left that afternoon. But what she didn’t know was that after she left at four, that I went back home to get my bag which I had secretly packed. And then I left at five and followed her up there.”
By this time, Judah’s legs were swinging in unison and he was on a role, retelling the tale only two days old.
“And so she would call several times while I was following her up there. And she thought I was napping… or eating dinner…”
Giggles.
“But she would call at inopportune times, like when I was going through toll booths, so I would have to let it ring and call her back…”
“And she thought you were sleeping!” Augustus whooped.
Judah was grinning from ear to ear.
“And so I got to Wheaton that night, and I spent the night with some friends of ours, and just spent Thursday night and most of Friday just praying and preparing…”
“For what?!” One of the other boys hollered.
“For proposing,” Judah said as patiently as possible to the “moron” who had posed the question.
“And so, Friday night came. And I was preparing a nice meal for Evangel at our friend’s house. And they had invited her over for dinner, so here she was heading over to their house with our friend, and Evangel passes off the phone to her so that she can talk to me… And she’s was just saying, ‘Oh, we hope to see you again before too long.’ And I said, ‘Oh, soon, soon.’ And then they walk in the door and I was standing there with flowers…”
“Awwwwww!”
“And there was music playing, and I prepared this Tanzanian dinner for us.”
Confused heckeling.
“It was Tanzanian because when we were in school, while I was working in Tanzania, Evangel was in Peru in the same program. And it was the same time then that Evangel started having an interest in me, but when she got back, I was already dating someone else, and so she put it out of her mind. But that was a special remembrance of that time, so we just ate our dinner and listened to some music that had played a special part in our relationship. And we danced a little…”
“Did you kiss?” Joe asked most inappropriately.
Whoops, laughter. Judah dismissed the question.
“And so Evangel knew that our evening was going to continue, so she got ready to go. And I gave her a red rose…”
“Awwwwww!”
“And it had a note attached to it, that told her we were going to the place where you used to play music together. We used to go to this coffee shop and play there, and I got special permission from the guy who owned the place, to go there – on campus. The coffee shop had been gutted. They were taking it out, but the room was still there. And so we got there, and there was this other red rose…”
“Awwwwww!”
“With a hymnal. And we opened up to a marked place and sang “Trust and Obey” because that has been a special hymn for us these past few months. And then there was this other note that told her to follow a trail of red roses.”
“Awwwwww!”
“And she followed the trail of roses up three flights of stairs to an old prayer chapel in the campus building. And inside I had set up a little altar there, and sitting on it was a white carnation…”
“Awwwwww!”
“It was a special moment because back in ’99, when we were at a special dinner for school, I was there with my date but we were all sitting with other friends, and Evangel was one of them. And I had bought white carnations for all the ladies there. And it was just at that time that Evangel was really becoming interested, but again, had removed it from her mind. So after the dinner she had come to that prayer chapel with the white carnation, just crying some and praying…”
“Awwwwww!”
“And then I told her that she was the only one, and that I wanted to commit my life to her and to spend the rest of my life with her. And we just recommitted our lives to God there and our future, our marriage, our family… And then I kneeled and gave her the ring, which has many special symbolisms to it. And I asked her to marry me. And she agreed.”
“Awwwwww!”
“Whew!” OLeif wiped his forehead.
“That’s a relief!” Someone hooted.
“So did you kiss?” Joe asked again, getting a biff in the shoulder from Magnus.
“I don’t know…” Judah grinned.
“A ha ha ha!”
“Never kiss and tell!” Madge hollered. “Never kiss and tell.”
Jimmy got up, grinning oddly as was his way. “Ok, guys, so be taking notes on all of that.”
“Yeah…” Magnus muttered.
And the evening concluded with the youth gathering to learn about C.S. Lewis, an introduction to his works over the next weeks, while OLeif created little horse-like creatures out of cotton stuffing from an Ernie doll Joe had found in the corner. They then stacked the several hundred chairs in the hay barn, setting up a bucket brigade from the loft, down the stairs, to the room beneath. And except for the odd notion that Magnus had taken to calling Susie, “the Jew,” the evening was relatively normal. But then again, even that, was normal.
“What – do you think I like this mortal life of yours? There doesn’t seem to be any honest joy anymore! Your modern life of yours seems to have got small. Everything’s puckered up.”
– Blackbeard, “Blackbeard’s Ghost”