So we celebrated early, on the very same day he finished the exam—July 31, 1991—booking ourselves a table at a downtown restaurant called Gordon. It was one of our favorite places, a special-occasion kind of joint, with soft Art Deco lighting and crisp white tablecloths and things like caviar and artichoke fritters on the menu. It was the height of summer and we were happy. At Gordon, Barack and I always ordered every course. We had martinis and appetizers. We picked a nice wine to go with our entrées. We talked idly, contentedly, maybe a little sappily. As we were reaching the end of the meal, Barack smiled at me and raised the subject of marriage. He reached for my hand and said that as much as he loved me with his whole being, he still didn’t really see the point. Instantly, I felt the blood rise in my cheeks. It was like pushing a button in me—the kind of big blinking red button you might find in some sort of nuclear facility surrounded by warning signs and evacuation maps. Really? We were going to do this now? In fact, we were. We’d had the hypothetical marriage discussion plenty of times already, and nothing much ever changed. I was a traditionalist and Barack was not. It seemed clear that neither one of us could be swayed. But still, this didn’t stop us—two lawyers, after all—from taking up the topic with hot gusto. Surrounded by men in sport coats and women in nice dresses enjoying their fancy meals, I did what I could to keep my voice calm. “If we’re committed,” I said, as evenly as I could muster, “why wouldn’t we formalize that commitment? What part of your dignity would be sacrificed by that?” From here, we traversed all the familiar loops of the old argument. Did marriage matter? Why did it matter? What was wrong with him? What was wrong with me? What kind of future did we have if we couldn’t sort this out? We weren’t fighting, but we were quarreling, and doing it attorney-style. We punched and counterpunched, dissected and cross-examined, though it was clearly I who was more inflamed. It was I who was doing most of the talking. Eventually, our waiter came around holding a dessert plate, covered by a silver lid. He slid it in front of me and lifted the cover. I was almost too miffed to even look down, but when I did, I saw a dark velvet box where the chocolate cake was supposed to be. Inside it was a diamond ring. Barack looked at me playfully. He’d baited me. It had all been a ruse. It took me a second to dismantle my anger and slide into joyful shock. He’d riled me up because this was the very last time he would invoke his inane marriage argument, ever again, as long as we both should live. The case was closed. He dropped to one knee then and with an emotional hitch in his voice asked sincerely if I’d please do him the honor of marrying him. Later, I’d learn that he’d already gone to both my mother and my brother to ask for their approval ahead of time. When I said yes, it seemed that every person in the whole restaurant started to clap.
Those words stuck me wholeheartedly. The romance in the scenario is unobscureable, and the felicity of narrator is indisputable.
When you see something nice and desirable, you want to own it yourself. Accordingly, when I read these lines, I begin to wonder what if the same simple sweet little trick happen to me instead, and how I will feel exactly. This explains the long-lasting robustness of romance love stories worldwide.
However, this segment moves me more then the fictional love stories do, because true stories mean higher possibilities of being bestowed the same fortune yourself.
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