I fear the snark factor will be sadly lacking in this post, because I just can't get all cynical here - the story is simply too nice. You stand warned - don't say I didn't tell you.
OK, if you're still with me, Gentle Reader, this is what I did yesterday.
I was meeting clients at The Library Hotel for a poetry writing workshop - a young couple whom I had never met before. I had, however, been given the heads-up that the gentleman who'd booked the workshop was planning to cap the session by proposing marriage to the young lady whom he was surprising with a romantic poetry-for-two event. Naturally, I was thrilled. Show me a poet who doesn't get all goose-bumpy and tingly at the prospect of assisting in a romance, and I'll show you Charles Bukowski. (OK - so I sneaked in a snark, after all. What can I say? You knew I was a snark when you picked me up.)
Naturally, this involved a certain amount of feverish emailing between myself and the gentleman in question. We set up a prearranged sentence that he would utter when it was time for me to vamoose so that he could get to the main event - the proposal - and I queried him as to what kind of poem he felt they would be most comfortable writing. We decided on free verse, and I made up a little list of prompts and ideas so as to get everybody's creative juices flowing.
The couple arrived a little late. Being from out of town, they had been taken somewhat by surprise by the combination of ingenuity and luck required to find a parking spot in the vicinity of Madison and Forty-First in the early afternoon. But they had managed it, and arrived, a trifle out of breath, and he explained that he would have to run out to hit the one-hour meter at some point. The lady was a trifle mystified as to why she was being ushered into the Reading Room of the Library Hotel to meet with a total stranger who was sitting at a large table that had a laptop and a lot of pens and paper on it; she also seemed a bit taken aback at the news that she was now to sit down and start writing a poem. However, she recovered gamely, and after a few false starts, we got into the groove.
Initially, they were going to write the poem together, trading the paper back and forth - he writing a line, then she writing a line, then he another line, and so on. But that didn't feel comfortable after a bit, so we decided to switch techniques. We had hit upon a theme - "The Journey." After all, they were on a journey, and here they were, far from home in New York City. But they were also on the bigger journey of life, and the journey of discovering one another - although, of course, only one of them was aware that the journey was about to take a much more interesting twist.
And here I have to put in, Gentle Reader, that the writing would probably have gone a little more smoothly if the about-to-be-proposed-to lady had not been so beautiful that he simply couldn't keep his eyes off her. She, for her part, struck me as shy, serious, very, very smart, and very, very sweet. I was hoping with all my heart that this was going to have a happy ending.
He suddenly got very inspired and wrote out an entire page in one fell swoop, one arm crooked around the paper so that she couldn't see, and I was enlisted to type it up on the laptop and email it to him so they would have a nice copy to print out later. It was a lovely poem - really beautiful and heartfelt. I know I would have melted on the spot if someone had penned those words in my praise. As soon as he was done, he ran out to put money in the meter, and she and I turned to her poem.
She was still having a hard time - we would start, and we would stall. I suggested an acrostic - write out the letters J-O-U-R-N-E-Y, one letter to a line, and then see what lines suggest themselves, with those letters as the first letter of each line. That got us jump-started, and we had gotten several lines written when we stalled out again. It probably didn't help matters that, as I said, she was clearly very intelligent and could sense that something was in the wind. She just didn't know what, and to tell the truth, I think it had her a bit uneasy.
I decided to give her a little "alone time," so I went off to the bathroom to wash my hands. I don't know about you, but it is my particular blessing - or curse - that I tend to get all my best ideas when I'm in the bathroom, usually while staring off into space with the hot water running as the soap turns to a big mush in my hands. Ask my husband how many times I've yelled out of the shower, "Hey, honey - can you write this down before I forget it?!" So it was, of course, in the bathroom that it clicked. Good heavens! Why hadn't I thought of it before?
I came back and announced, "I've figured it out. You shouldn't finish the poem now. We have a finished poem - the one your boyfriend wrote. And it's a terrific poem. But, you see - your journey doesn't finish here at this table. Your journey goes on. And you don't know where it's going to take you. You've got this great second line - Obstacles turn into opportunities. And you've talked about how you can't see the whole road past the little part that's illuminated by the headlights. So how about if we stop here, and you come back to it again in an hour, or a day, or a week, or even in six months, and fill in more after the next part of the journey has revealed itself?"
She beamed, and just at this propitious moment he came hurrying back, announcing that he'd made it to the car a few steps ahead of the Traffic Enforcement agent. I looked at my watch just as he was saying the line that was my exit cue, exclaimed that I would have to run, packed up my gear, and got myself out the door as quickly as possible so that they'd have some privacy. Fortunately, the Reading Room was fairly deserted in mid-afternoon. I cast a glance over my shoulder as I left. They were smiling at one another.
All afternoon, as my family drove upstate to a college interview for my teenage son, I wondered what had happened. I shot a text to the Library Hotel - "What happened? Did she say yes???" They wrote back, "Don't know yet. We'll keep you posted!"
We were all done with the interview, which went splendidly, and were back on the road after a celebratory dinner when I checked my phone again. And there it was:
I just heard - She said yes!
At this, my entire family erupted into cheers, and my son beat on the dashboard like a bongo drum.
So you'll have to give me a few days before I can get back to being my cynical self, Gentle Reader. Right now I am walking around with a big, goofy smile on my face, thinking how wonderful it is that these two charming, delightful, perfectly-matched people have found one another and are going to get married, and that I had the privilege of playing a small part in their important day. My wedding wish for them? May they always be as happy as they were when I last glimpsed them, smiling into one another's eyes.
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