A serious question.   

My life with Abigail was not simple.  She was still teaching full-time in New York, and I was working in Washington, D.C.  Whenever possible we would spend all-too-brief weekends together.

Come summer, we were spending more time together.  She needed a car.  I looked at the ads and found a nice little white used car.  The guy selling his car was the youth minister at a local church.  I started to explain that I was buying it for my girlfriend.  No, that would not sound right, and it was not true.  I was buying it for my future wife.  “I’m buying it for my fiancée.”

There had never been any doubt that I wanted to marry Abigail.  I never considered anything short of that.  But, in my methodical way, I had held off for six long months.  It was time to pop the question.

I took her to a dark, romantic Spanish restaurant in Alexandria.  I don’t know how we behaved in those days but the waiters called us the love-birds, and they put us in the “lovers’ cove” upstairs.  I had written her a little poem, a bad poem.  I can’t write poetry, but I thought the effort might soften her up.

But it was not our night.  A thunderstorm came up and, just as I was warming up to ask her, water started dripping right on our table.  Ink in the poem ran.  We scooted the table to the side.  And then I told her I loved her and would love her forever and would she be my wife?  I knew well the scene in Hollywood movies; the woman looks longingly into her paladin’s eyes and gushes, “oh yes, yes!”  Well, not the philosophical Abigail.  I asked, and waited.  And waited.  Then waited some more.  She seemed lost in deep thought.

Finally, I reminded her that I had asked a question and was still holding my breath for an answer.  In the gravest tones, she said Yes.  Why the long pause?  “It was a serious question and I thought I should give it a serious answer.”  She certainly had.