Back to the Beginning

My relationship with Jon began over e-mail. We met on Match.com and after exchanging witty banter for a week or so, we met over coffee at Fido in the Village. I noticed that he was much cuter than his online photo and he noticed, well… he noticed my cleavage. I still have to remind him that my eyes aren’t located down there, but he’s a guy- 100%. We spent a few hours talking, which led to a second date at Rumours Wine Bar. He wined and dined me with wine, crab cakes, and his intellect, then walked me to my car where I let him know about my martial arts training. Date number one: get his attention with my cleavage. Date number two: let him know that my cleavage is off limits, lest he want a spinning round kick to the head. Both were effective attention getters! Surprisingly, he asked me for a third date, so we saw Little Miss Sunshine at a matinee and he took me to dinner at South Street where he had me try fried cheesecake for the first time. Any man who feeds me dessert will win my heart, so we kept dating. Golf dates, dancing, darts, plays, concerts, picnics, trips, and a year and a half later we’re still going out on dates and he finally knows what color my eyes are.

His birthday is February 27th, so I planned for us to go to Memphis for the weekend to celebrate. What says “Happy Birthday” like a tour of Graceland I ask you! So, I made plans… plans to celebrate him throughout the week and plans to take him to Memphis for the weekend. I did not plan on getting sick the day before his birthday. On his birthday I was in bed with a 101 degree fever, could hardly speak, and was in less than festive spirits. But, it was his birthday… and I’m his girlfriend… so I felt the need to “buckle up” and at least go to dinner with him. Sure, I was probably contagious and I sounded like I had strep and Bird Flu- who wouldn’t want to go to dinner with me. He suggested South Street and invited some work friends to join us- a good decision since I didn’t have a voice and someone should be able to talk to him on his birthday.

The next afternoon, I was still on the couch with a fever. He called when he finished work around 8:00 p.m. and invited me to go have a glass of wine at Rumours. Was he missing something? Was my fever and croaky voice not enough of an indicator that I shouldn’t be going out? Apparently not. He was slightly persistent. So I suggested he just pick up a bottle of wine and come over for a bit. When he showed up with a bottle of wine from Rumours, I was surprised. There’s a wine store within a mile of my house and he could have saved about $20, but he’s a man and I stopped trying to understand “man behavior” years ago. So, we had a glass of wine and he went home. Then I went to bed and woke up with hallucinations because… well, cough medicine and Tylenol PM should not be washed down with wine.

My fever was down on Friday but I was still very sick, and we still had reservations and plans for a trip to Memphis. So, I stopped to pick him up around 3:00 p.m.

“We have to take a little detour,” he said. “And I need to drive.”

“Okay. I don’t feel good, so you can drive all the way to Memphis if you want.”

He got behind the wheel and headed toward Hillsboro Village. I wondered what he was doing, but there was so much congestion in my head that it felt like my brain had shriveled up to make room for all the sickness, and I was doing good to know where I was. He pulled up and parked in front of Fido, getting out of the car. I followed him inside Fido. After trying to find a booth, we sat down at the bar along the window.

“Do you want a hot chocolate?”

Was he paying attention to my cleavage again? He knows I drink Chai tea. Why was he offering me hot chocolate!

“No. I’ll have a Chai.”

We sat down to wait on our drinks and he pulled a gift bag out of his backpack.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed there’s been a theme this week.”

Yeah… on Wednesday I had a fever, you asked me out. On Thursday I had a fever, you asked me out. I didn’t think that’s what he was talking about though.

“No… I don’t know.”

He handed me the gift bag and I reached in to pull out a DVD of Little Miss Sunshine.

“Awww, this is the first movie we saw together. But honey, I already own this.”

I couldn’t read him.

So I said, “But you can never have too many Little Miss Sunshines!”

I reached in again and pulled out some martial arts handwraps. At this point, I’m not sure if it was the fever or my shriveled brain, but I was confused.

“There’s a theme,” he said.

And right now, reading this- you’re catching on and you SEE the theme. But at the time, I was sick and I was medicated. There was no theme. I was thinking he was just being sweet to me because I was sick all week.

I reached in and pulled out the last gift- a CD he had made with the date and the words I love you, Jen.

“Awww, you made me a mix tape!” The ultimate ‘I’m into you’ gift.

Then he handed me a card and after reading the first panel, he asked me to wait until our drinks came. After getting our drinks, he let me continue with the second panel, which ended with instructions to open to the third panel.

And here is where the unmedicated parts of my brain turned on. He had written out the details of our first three dates, beginning with date number three at Southstreet. Then, he mentioned our second date at Rumours Wine Bar, and brought us back to the beginning of our relationship at Fido- where some other girl took the hot chocolate I ordered the night we met. He wrote a paragraph of sweet words, having nothing to do with my cleavage, and wrote there was just one more thing to ask…

I turned toward him and he dropped down on one knee, right beside the table where we first met.

“Jennifer Leigh Box, will you marry me?”

It wasn’t the most poetic “yes” with my laryngitis voice, but I managed to get it out. He slipped the most beautiful ring on my finger and we smiled all the way to Memphis… and it had nothing to do with getting to see Graceland the next day!