“So when did you know she was the One,” asked my friend and co-conspirator on our way to procure an engagement ring.
“Is this really the time for ‘philosophical’ questions?” I thought. I was preoccupied by our lateness. And besides, finding such a decisive moment in my relationship is like chasing the horizon. It recedes with each step toward it and mockingly approaches when I retreat. Even if I were to undertake such a task and trace the events of our relationship in search of such a moment, I would eventually arrive at the day that met and still not have an answer. This limit, the day that we met, would confront me like a mountain range, or an ocean, or a glacial canyon, or even the edge of an imagined flat Earth, beyond which I would surmise lies the truth, the moment when I knew she was the one. The insistence in my friend’s eyes told me that her question was not rhetorical, so I gave an equally philosophical answer, one that I had given before. “I guess I always knew.”
“From the first moment you met her?” Her eyes widened incredulously.
“Well, no, not exactly.” The memory of the small smoky dance floor of the no-longer-existing SoMa (“South of Market”) Bar and Lounge returned. While I was there one night in the spring of 2005, I approached a shapely silhouette and silently propositioned her to dance with me to the alluring baseline, rather than just scooting up behind. “It’s just that you always know,” I continued, “from the beginning, if someone has the potential.”
I hadn’t answered the question, deliberately, mainly because I couldn’t answer it. Was it our first encounter, our first kiss, or our first confession of love? Or was it an unremarkable moment that could only ever be identified as “a moment passed”? Or perhaps my “philosophical” response was accurate for reasons that I could not begin to understand. Was the entire serendipitous sequence of events that comprised my life a prelude to every moment that is yet to come, including my asking the-subject-of-my-deepest-affection for her hand? In short, are the circumstances of my life fate (which I must presume to even believe in the One) or chance?
Nonetheless, there was a distinct and memorable point in our relationship when I began to plan. During the fall of 2007, after recently confronting the dramatic consequences of our brief cohabitation, I walked into a tiny jewelry store in Chinatown, and was willingly seduced into purchasing a ring, allegedly for her, actually for me. Well, not actually for me, because it was most definitely a lady’s ring—an oval cut stone flanked by two trillion cut stones set on a thin white gold band with a filigree design. It was pretty enough, for me. But for the-subject-of-my-deepest-affection it was as tacky as the little red box that housed it. Even in the jewelry store, I found the stones too dark. Also, the filigree design was distracting, and the setting itself was too intricate for my unrefined tastes.
Nonetheless, the purchased ring served a purpose. Like trying on a new pair of shoes before buying them, I tried on the idea of engagement. For months, with the ring buried in my wallet, I would play a game with myself, imagining the contexts of its conspicuousness—the attention it would draw adorning her slender fingers and providing an accent to the rich complexion of her skin; the feel of it against my fingertips while we held hands; the casual incorporation into her daily attire. I would daydream the possible scenarios of its exchange, the proposal itself. Would I be on one knee? Would I write her a poem? Would she be surprised? Would it be public or private? Would it be a good story to tell, or would only the two of us smile while remembering it? Would she like the ring primarily because she found it beautiful or because of what it represented? Would she say yes?
By the following summer, I had decided that I would give her a sapphire. It had taken me nine months to translate her simple preference for a stone-other-than-a-diamond into a concrete gem. I considered black pearls, emeralds, amethysts, and rubies. I still don’t know exactly why I chose a sapphire. It did, though, have the happy coincidence of also being her birth stone. Through my extensive research I learned that there are sapphire mines in Montana, where the beautiful and rare Yogo Sapphires are found. As soon as I had the chance, I would rent a car, drive to those mines in Montana, and stay until I had removed from the earth with my own hands the perfect stone that symbolized my love—cerulean and brilliant, organic and rough, ready to be fashioned into a gem. I would have their experienced stone cutters sculpt my find into an elegant cushion, emerald, or round-cut shape. I could see the ring already: a single sapphire in a simple solitaire setting fashioned from a white metal to help the blue spring off the hand in the absence of glittering diamonds. What a story it would be, chronicling the trek to Montana, detailing the tedious process of sifting through piles of gravel, and the triumphant moment of its discovery, pulled from the rabble and treasured like the meaning of life. But whether it was fate or circumstance, the “chance” that I awaited never arrived. How could I disappear for potentially a week or two and have my plan not be discovered?
While I waited, nonetheless, summer impatiently matured into fall, and I continued to scour the internet with disappointing results. Between online photographs and jewelry stores, I had viewed easily over a thousand rings and stones. My eye had sharpened considerably. At a glance I could gauge color quality, carat size, and often price. But then one restless afternoon, almost a year to the day since my stroll through Chinatown, a ray of hope that I had not encountered before emerged from the rabble of Google like a patch of sky winking through the rain clouds—GemsNY and the charming jeweler, Vishnu.
“Vishnu?” I initially thought, “like the Hindu god?” Were the Fates mocking the seriousness of my project? Or was divine guidance making itself known? Or was this merely another coincidence, and any attempt to extract meaning was an unfortunate consequence of reading too much Derrida on too little sleep?
As a wholesaler, GemsNY did not have a store. The address wasn’t even on their website. I could order loose stones online, or call them. Though I tried to maintain the skeptical stance that had sharpened my eye, the voice that answered the phone sounded disarmingly sincere. I discerned a patience in his salesmanship that was completely absent from individuals I encountered in the retail market. In fact, he encouraged me to explore the Manhattan diamond district before scheduling an appointment so that I would have a better sense of the excellent stone quality and prices that they offer. Was this place real? Or was Vishnu just the front man of another scam destined to end in disappointment? I told Vishnu that I had done my research, and then asked him to set aside eight stones selected from his online inventory for me to see.
On the morning of my appointment, I still had my doubts, but what did I have to lose, I thought. My co-conspirator and I stood before the painfully plain building on 48th street. On either sides of the entrance were glittering display windows, full of jewelry of all sorts. The building we were about to enter was a stone rectangular entryway with a simple glass door, adorned with little more than the street number. The doorman in lobby waved us to the elevators beyond him without even asking our names. We got off at the fourth floor and meandered to the end of a narrow winding hallway, passing the identical doors of what I assumed were other wholesalers. A few moments later, we were standing in the tiny lobby of the family business, GemsNY. A smiling and young, cocoa-complected Indian man approached and greeted us. “Hello. I am Vishnu.” He was mortal after all.
He ushered us into his office, making small talk and waving away our apologies for our lateness. Then he extracted from a drawer the eight stones I had requested—three oval-cuts, two cushion-cuts, an emerald-cut, a square-cut, and a round-cut, each one a slightly different shade of blue. Though they were all beautiful, the brilliance of the round-cut immediately set it apart, and that is what I ultimately chose.
Within a week it was set and the following Sunday I was sitting in a sunlit study with the father of the-subject-of-my-deepest-affection.
“So what is it you wanted to speak to me about?” His Ghanaian accent massaged the hospitality that projected from his warm and suspiciously prescient smile.
“Well, I’ll be direct,” deciding that brevity would lend me confidence. “I am very fond of your daughter. I love her. And I would like your blessing to ask for her hand in marriage.”
His smile grew broader and he said, “Well, you have my blessing! Welcome to the family.” I stood up and hugged him. “I will tell my wife, but I assume you want us to keep this a secret until you ask—“
“Yes, please.”
The afternoon that followed seemed impossibly long since I weighed every moment as potentially THE moment. Right before dinner, which the mother of the-subject-of-my-deepest-affection assured me would be “special,” I approached the-subject-of-my-deepest-affection and suggested we take a walk.
“Why?” she asked simply.
I paused as I tried to measure whether her question was born of suspicion or genuine curiosity. If she was suspicious, I would dismiss the suggestion as a passing whim, an impulsive way to spend our idle time before dinner and an efficient means of staving off the boredom to which it seemed we were slowly succumbing. If she was merely curious then I would press the issue, alluding to the freshness of the fall air, the alluring quality of the long shadows at this time of day, and the unique opportunity to pass by the Japanese maple at the end of the block that had recently exploded into phoenix red. That is where I would propose to her I thought. I will ask her on bended knee by the trunk of that beautiful tree, beneath that crimson umbrella, dramatic against the cerulean sky.
But before I could respond, she asked again. “Why?” and continued, “It’s too cold for a walk, and dinner is too soon anyway.”
“You’re right,” is all I said, and left it at that.
The following day, we returned to New York together. My housemate was absent. It was nearly six o’clock so we began to cook—thick pan-seared tuna steaks, sautéed broccoli and mushrooms, and Jasmine rice. I set the table in the dining room and poured us each a glass of water.
When half of our dinner was eaten, a compulsion suddenly arose in me like sneeze, with nothing left to do but breathe deeply and let it out. She asked me about a poem that she saw me secretly composing. Where was circumstance to ‘save’ me now, I thought. After a slight hesitation, aware that this was THE moment, I confessed.
“The poem I was writing is not finished, but it is to tell you how I feel about you.” She stopped chewing. I leaned confidently across the table, extending my hands, palms up, but her hands were in her lap. She swallowed the remaining food in her mouth. I closed one hand over the other. “I care for you very much, and I wonder would you do me the honor of being my wife?”
A few silent seconds passed. “Are you serious?” she squeaked.
“Yes, very serious. In fact, I have a ring.” I pulled the little black box from my pocket, opened it, and presented the ring to her. She glanced at it for two seconds before her face contorted into what seemed like a grimace and the backs of her hands sprang from her lap to catch the tears that leapt from her crinkled eyelids.
“Is that a ‘yes’?”
“Yes, Yes!”
