For Memorial Day, I headed up to Luna Pier to hang out with Don and his family.
Saturday morning we served food to the poor downtown — something Don does every week. I placed slices of cheese on burger patties and chatted with Chuck, who was placing the patties on the buns.
Afterwards we kayaked up Otter Creek, a tributary of Lake Erie, until we hit snags of driftwood so impassable we had to give up. At one point, Don scooted his kayak over a giant log lying about a half inch under the water. I tried the same maneuver, got stuck, climbed out of the kayak onto the log, pulled the kayak over, teetered precariously for a moment trying to get back in, then sort of fell over into the boat with a giant splash and lost my paddle.
If you’re wondering where Don was during all of this, he had paddled a few yards off and was (very helpfully!) filming the whole thing.
Sunday was church and then a family outing to a Mud Hens game. So I was a little confused when, as we were leaving the service in Toledo, I said “Let’s grab lunch somewhere,” and Don said, “Ah, we’d better get back to Luna Pier and check on the dogs.”
“Dogs?” I thought. “Dogs? I’m hungry!”
But, OK. There are restaurants in Luna Pier. It would be fine.
We checked on the dogs. They had weathered their full hour and a half alone unscathed. Let’s go to lunch.
Don said, “I need to go down to Ed’s for a minute,” and disappeared down the street carrying two lawn chairs. I sat down on the couch.
He came back.
I got up.
He said, “Oh, shoot! The laundry!”
I sat down.
Eventually, eons later, we departed for, I thought, lunch.
Don said, “I wonder if that sailboat race is still happening. Let’s go out on the pier and see.”
I mean, at this point, why not? We headed onto the pier. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see two young women sitting on lawn chairs. They were dressed (oddly for eighty-degree weather) in sweatshirts with the hoods pulled down over their eyes. I registered that they were fishing, when Don, who had seemed preoccupied by the sailboats said, “Can I ask you a question?”
And then he was down on one knee with a box, and I was not processing well at all — my brain had gone into this “wait, wait, wait what, now what’s actually happening?” mode — so there was a probably-too-long pause before I said, “Yes.”
And then the overheated fisherwomen who turned out to be his daughters, incognito, with Dora The Explorer fishing rods, were heading towards us and Don was taking the ring out of the box and it was falling off his fingertips and skipping and hopping across the concrete into the lake.
Yes.
The lake.
Within 30 seconds of the proposal, the ring was in Lake Erie.
There was a pause, and then we all started to laugh because, I thought, “What else can we do?”
Clearly I did not know the Curtises.
“I guess that’s the end of that,” I said, staring down at the green water swirling over moss-covered boulders.
Daughters and Don were aghast. “What do you mean? Of course it’s not gone! We’ll go find it.”
You know how when someone’s telling you something patently insane, but they clearly believe it so completely that you get sucked in? It was like that.
First, Daughter #1, who was wearing an athletic skirt, put on her sister’s rubber boots and hopped in the water. She couldn’t find it.
Don said, “I’ll go get my swim trunks.”
Daughter #1 said, “I’ll go get a kid to give me his goggles.” The two of them departed, with purpose down the beach.
I asked Daughter #2, “What’s the odds we get this back?”
She looked at me seriously, “One-hundred percent. My dad? He is going to find that ring.”
A brief vision of Don in scuba gear with a supporting dive-team flashed through my brain, but then Don was back and in the lake and reaching down once and twice and…oh, yep. There it was, sparkling on the edge of the pier.
“Now,” he said, wrapping the beach towel he’d brought around his shoulders, “Should we get lunch?”
By the way, the game (which I know you were all waiting to hear about) was fun even though the Hens lost by two. Also, I’m getting married. And I’m very happy about it. A lot.
Happy Memorial Day!
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