Love, fire and speeding

Just as this first month of 2009 is ending and the month of love is beginning, I thought it was time to write about our first spring of love between Don and me. Wow! Has it really been 31 years and a little bit more since he asked me to marry him?


All weekend I had known he wanted to ask me but was lacking the courage to actually do so. I had taken him all over Waco to all the romantic spots I could think of--Lake Waco, a couple of city parks, but...nothing happened. Finally Saturday night at my parents' house we were alone, trying to erect their Christmas tree--a little thing bought from my mother's high school students but which did not fit in the tree stand. We were fighting that tree alone but it kept falling over--too skinny and too puny while my parents slept peacefully. Suddenly we smelled something odd and ran into the other room where the Yule Log had rolled out of the fireplace and lit about a dozen little fires in the yellow shag carpet. Don tried to put them out while I ran down to wake my parents. Daddy couldn't see without his glasses but he ran into the den and could see the sparks and hopped around, trying to put them out in his bare feet! In short order, only a dozen or so brown places remained in the rug, but no other damage. After that, of course, we were wide awake! Finally, my parents went back to bed just as my best friend called and came over, the first reunion since college graduation the year before. We all talked for hours before she left in the early hours of the morning when I started telling Don all the reasons I could not get married. Naturally, he was thoroughly discouraged about any wedding plans. Don and I went to bed--separately, of course!

The next day, after church, he and I were driving home on I-35W somewhere outside of Itasca, TX going 70 mph and holding hands. Suddenly his hand got all sweaty and we started going faster and faster as he shot out at about 75 mph, "Wouldyou marryme!?" Incredulous, I said, "What?" like I didn't really know what he had said. We never stopped or slowed down. He repeated it, slower, never taking his eyes off the road, like the good driver he is, "Would you marry me? I love you." And, I said "Yeeesss!" slowly and with a definite happy lilt in my voice. That has been decades ago when multitasking was not even a word.


The Virginia legislature is discussing enacting a law to make it illegal to talk on cell phones while driving. This story from three decades ago proves that there have always been lots of distractions on the highway!