Last night my friend Digger - not his real name, his nickname since birth, and he's one of my oldest friends so I get to refer to him still as "Digger" - called me repeatedly, like, to the point where I started to get worried something was wrong.

"Hey, kid, what's going on," I said when I called him back.

"Um, excuse me. I was just reading your blog today and did I read things correctly," he asked, kinda smirkingly, kinda half-indignant, more amused than anything.

"Oh crap! Did I forget to tell you that I'm engaged?"

This has sort of been the protocol since Scott and I decided that we wanted to get hitched. Once we told the appropriate parties - our families, friends, the dog, although she suspected something was up - we've basically just let the information sort of trickle out. It's not for lack of excitement - on a daily basis we remark about how excited we are to be marrying the other person, whether in passing or in a more serious context, like when I am cussing at my character while we're playing Mario Kart.

He's marrying CHARMING, people. Ask the neighbors about the words they heard coming from my living room on Monday.

Mostly, for me, it comes from a place of certainty about marrying Scott. It's a shame, to be honest, that a lot of my reflections about marriage are made through the filter of having been married before. I didn't marry an awful person, and I hope whomever he ends up with (or has already, I'm not sure since we haven't spoken in more than a year) treats him better, and with more care and consideration, than I did. But all that said, I did marry the wrong person, for me, and I think it's OK to say that, and to recognize that even more fully as a result of who I am marrying now.

That's all a little more tangent-y than I intended, but it's difficult to separate similar experiences and place them into tidy little compartments, as much as I wish I could. Besides, I'd like to think I learned something during my first go round and, in the context of this particular topic, I learned that no matter how nice a person is, "nice" is not the best determinate for linking up your life for forever to someone. So while I'm not certain that we are perfect, or divorce-resistant, though you should go ahead now and just assume that since we're both on #2 that we've talked exhaustively about how we're not in this with divorce being an option, I am certain that we are two solid candidates to be entering into a legally binding agreement wherein we're allowed certain rights as a result of it.

And how romantic is THAT to talk about, eh?

I've been pretty devoted to this guy since the beginning, and he to me, and it's not like either of us view marriage as a formality or anything less than sacred, especially since there were moments early on that lead both of us to wonder if we'd get to this point, but there aren't many flowery discussions to be had. There just weren't. People ask us, "When did this happen?" and the answer is usually, "Well, we've been working on it for months."

And we have. There wasn't a formal proposal, and I didn't want a ring, but it was more the end decision of long talks, figuring out what we want from our lives and how to make those things happen together. And the more we talked, the more clear it became that if we thought we were a good match before, we'd certainly be unstoppable once we filed a joint tax return!

There is an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet that, and excuse the possible bastardization of it, talks about love in a way that is more practical than romantic, but as a result seem more romantic to me than anything else I've ever read.

"Love consists in this: that two solitudes protect and border and greet each other."

When it became clear, as a result of all of those conversations, that we could do this - that we could protect, border and greet each other - that's when we knew. And it's not as sexy as, perhaps, trips to Paris and proposals on beaches, it is most certainly the most calming and completing moment I've ever experienced.

And so it seemed silly, I guess, to give up that moment to frantic and frenzied phone calls, or to document the process ad nauseum here, or to rehearse a story to tell our friends, so it wouldn't be so awkward to say how it happened really happened. Amazingly, though, only one person has gone for my left hand and asked to see my ring.

This is probably as good a time as any to let you know that I am not going to be talking about any of the particular minutiae of the wedding, partially because there isn't much to share, mostly because the Internet doesn't need to know everything. My comfort zones are just that, and you'd think someone who shares as much as I do would be OK with the color aspects to her life, but you'd be wrong.

What I will share is that we're getting married in a couple of months, out of town, and no one is invited. The location is on a dairy farm, but it's not in the Midwest, and the person who is marrying us came up in Google search as someone from whom people in town get their "news." I'll probably buy a simple cocktail-type dress, and get my flowers from a florist that day, and the wedding bands we've selected are pretty plain, but they're fitting for us. We're going to be eating a lot of cheese and drinking a lot of wine that weekend, too.

You'll actually probably hear a lot about how excited I am about all of that cheese, though.

Posted by Erin at 01:03 PM | filed under: Wedding, marriage, love, etc.