Building a life and home

Engagement is a wonderful time, full of discovery and new experiences.

There are things that you look forward to when you wait till you are 36 to get married. You look forward to not having to wear a dress that someone else selected in a color or shape that is horrifically unappealing to a wedding. You also look forward to the gift registry. At this point, you have spent a fortune on wedding gifts for other people while using knives you bought at the dollar store.

I was excited. My love and I were going to go to the big house store and dream about our life and home while shooting the labels of everything our little hearts desired. It was going to be this awesome bonding experience and we would walk out of the store holding hands and smiling as we dreamed and loved and dreamed some more...

That's what I thought would happen.
That's not how it went.

I should preface this story with a little background info on myself and my beloved.

We were raised very differently. Besides the difference between male and female, we were raised in quite different socioeconomic backgrounds. I was raised with more than enough of just about everything. He was not. Our definitions of what we need to start our lives together is very, very different.

As I skipped thru the front of the big house store with butterflies resting on my hair and shoulders and pixie dust sparkling around my gracefully dancing feet, much like the beginning sequence to a song in a romantic musical... I am warming up for a clicky gun extravaganza of epic proportions.

I had patiently waited even to look online, because this was something I really wanted us to do together. I wanted to really experience this together.

We are making a life and a home together. It's beautiful.

I headed straight for the bedding to pick the bedspread that I would someday stare at tiny baby fingers and toes and snuggle out bad dreams and have hours of tickle fights on. As I raised the gun to the tag of the lucky choice, my dreams cracked like a smelly, rotten egg on my head ran down my body in a bubbling, slimy poison of my girlish fantasy with the words... "We don't need that. It's $250. For a blanket. I'll bring my blanket from home." (Imagine that last line with the effect of a recording played back very slowly.)

With almost every attempt to select an item, I was met with lines of reason and practicality, such as... "Where are we going to put that?"... "Don't you already have that in a different color?"... And other horrific things that I've blocked from my memory.

This man who looks at me like he would tame the ocean at my whim or catch me a falling star to put in my hair... was saying words I not only had not heard him say to me, but could not comprehend.

In my shock and horror, I crumbled under the weight of my bitter disappointment.

I looked into the future and didn't like what I saw. No pretty, shiny things. Nothing unnecessary. Nothing frivolous.

This was not fun. And I was GOING TO CRY.

Crying is really not my thing. Do not be deceived. All this wedding business has cracked thru a really tough shell and reduced me to an emotional wreck. Crying at chick flicks, hallmark commercials, inspirational posters... I've spent a lifetime building up an immunity to the stuff that makes other girls cry.

But I was going to cry. It was inevitable. And he had no idea what he'd done. He was going to find out, though.

So we got in the car, and drove in almost complete silence to take him home and then I would go home and cry.

I later explained in a more rational emotional state what had transpired to the clueless man to whom I am betrothed. When he realized what he'd done, he showed the proper amount of remorse and tenderness.

And we agreed that I would complete the registry by myself and let him pick out a few sports things for his man room as payment for his silence.