Chana Williford – on a new adventure.

[This is the third in a series of letters from Chana to her friend Sarah. You can read the first one here, and the second here.]

Dallas, Texas
October 27, 2000

Sarah!

With an exclamation point to start with, I bet you’re dying to know what this letter is about. Which is wonderful, because I’m dying to tell you! I haven’t told a soul yet, and you’re the first to know. As usual. I’ve been running around like a “wacky broad,” as Steve would say, trying to contain my excitement and ever-increasing stress at the same time. It’s too much. I’ve got to burst. I said my mother would be the first person I’d tell because she’d kill me if she wasn’t, but she’ll never know about you, so here I go…

I turned twenty-one last Saturday. It was inevitable. Saturday came, the alarm went off at 5:36 a.m., and at 5:37 (the exact minute I came into this world twenty-one years ago) I groaned “Happy Birthday” to myself and went back to sleep until noon. Then the good times rolled.

We’ve come a long way since I last wrote you. I love Steve like nothing else and you’re about to see how much he loves me.

Upon wakening I found a pile of presents at the foot of the bed, all begging me to rip off the wrapping papers. I could almost hear them. I set to it with a shriek. Somehow the things Steve does for me make me feel like a happy little girl so much that I exude eight-year-old excitement from every pore. It’s amazing to realize now how old I felt before. Steve jokingly says I make him feel like a puppy again. I don’t doubt it, the old fart! He’s always covering up gray hairs with Just For Men, no matter how many times I say they make him look distinguished.

The presents ranged from practical (a Smith & Wesson knife, exactly like his own but smaller), to kinky (a Catholic schoolgirl outfit and a fishnet body stocking!), to just what I wanted (a pair of pink plaid pants that I had been eyeing at Hot Topic for over a month). Then he took me to lunch and we went to my favorite place for a nice adrenaline rush, Malibu Speedzone. Speedzone has go-carts that are small replicas of Indy cars. They’re so powerful that you have to have a driver’s license to race there. I always come out with a million bruises and scrapes, but it’s so much fun!

After we spent ourselves driving we rested awhile and then went out to dinner. My brother told me “No one is ever supposed to remember their twenty-first birthday!” But I really didn’t want to get trashed, so we just went to a restaurant called Sol’s Taco Lounge, where I knew I could get my first legal Pina Colada. Boy, drinking when the government says you’re old enough doesn’t make alcohol taste any damn better.

Steve, who normally eats so much that I wonder if he has a hollow leg, sort of poked at his meal, eventually eating about half of it as I wolfed down my enchiladas. “What’s wrong?” I asked, but he suddenly looked a lot better and sat up straighter. “Nothing! I have to go to the bathroom.” He got up and left. Weird.

When he came back he was acting totally normal again so I decided to let it drop. “Guys are so strange sometimes,” I thought. We paid the waiter and left, walking hand in hand back to the car, chit-chatting about silly things and love. We stopped here and there so I could bestow a few of the thousands of kisses I seem to have to plant on his face every day. Finally, we made it to the car and got in.

“Okay, I’m going to take you somewhere,” Steve said.

Feeling up for the adventure, I readily agreed. What else could be in store for this birthday? Were we going on a moonlight picnic? To a surprise party? I couldn’t wait to find out.

Thirty minutes and as many miles later, we pulled into the parking lot of an upscale hotel. Steve pulled some bags out of the back of the car but wouldn’t let me see what was in them. I was dying, and wondering why we weren’t going to the front – but then he pulled the card-key to the side door out of his pocket and in we went. Apparently he had already paid for the room! Then he opened the room door and – there it was. The honeymoon suite, complete with Jacuzzi in the bedroom. Holy crap! I let out another childish shriek and jumped on the super-duper king-size bed in delight.

“I have one more surprise for you,” Steve suddenly said, grabbing my hands and leading me to a chair. “Close your eyes.”

I closed my eyes and held out my hands for another gift, but all I felt were his hands on mine. “Okay, open them,” he almost whispered.

And there he was. At eye level. On one knee. A million things rushed through my head and my heart instantaneously as he stammered out his phrase. I caught the twinkle of gold and diamond out of the corner of my eye.

“I love you so much, Chana. Will you marry me?”

I don’t think he got it all out before I grabbed hold of his neck and started blabbering, “Of course, of course, of course yes I will of course!”

The ring would barely stay on my finger, he put it on the wrong hand, and I don’t think he really ever even heard my answer to the question, but nothing could have been more perfect. Two bottles of wine, four candles, and a nice hot steaming Jacuzzi bath later, we lay talking about the silliest things. And it was wonderful, to lie there with the person I love and be able to talk about those things. He confessed that he had been hiding the ring in the closet and would jump up when I went to the bathroom so he could check on it and kiss it over and over again. He had it custom designed for me using his own drawings of two hearts as a band joined together in the middle by a half-carat diamond.

So now I’ve been five days engaged and I just couldn’t take holding it in any longer. I’m going to my parents’ house tomorrow to tell them, and I can’t imagine what kind of reaction this news will get. Happiness, because my parents know what kind of man Steve is and that he loves me and makes me happier than I’ve ever been. And sadness, because I’m their baby girl – and we all know how that goes.

So now you know. I’m dizzy with excitement and love! It will be a long engagement, at least a year, but I know beyond a doubt that this is the right thing.

Nothing has ever felt righter.

Chana