Thank you for celebrating with us!

After a month of corresponding online, thanks to the famous dating website eHarmony, Carol and Oliver finally met. The setting: Phil'z Coffee. Time: morning, before work. They agreed to meet at 9:30 and Oliver walked in at 9:25. Despite this, Carol arrived first, which caught Oliver off guard. She would later admit that this was a power move. She had also paid for her own coffee, and declined Oliver's offer of a pastry. Little did she know then how much pastries would mean to her future husband. What followed was a friendly chat, and time flowed quickly as it does between friends. After only a few introductory answers a sense of ease settled at the table. Carol was strangely eager to listen to Oliver's stories about his life in Japan, and Oliver seemed genuinely nice and hardworking to Carol. Carol insists that Oliver is a good storyteller, though he isn't so sure. What followed were a handful more normal dates, the likes of which you may see in any Romantic Comedy from 1980-2010, before the pandemic would change the reality of dating in 2020. They remain grateful for the chance of self-discovery that their meeting in February provided, and soon realized that their paths had many intersecting points previously.

Carol knew for a few months that I was planning on marrying her. I had asked her parents for permission and was blessed with a family heirloom from her mother, so that I could construct a ring using her mother's diamond via my family's jeweler in Rapid City, South Dakota (Landstrom's). I had also discussed this with my own parents, who were very happy for me, and who anticipated this story in every conversation we'd had between Christmas and February 25th. I wasn't sure what I wanted to say to Carol, exactly, but I knew of a very beautiful hike in Muir Woods that leads to the Van Wyck Meadow. We packed up sandwiches from Michael's Sourdough in San Rafael and a thermos full of Earl Grey tea, taking pauses along the way to rest or apply a face mask when we would meet hikers going the other way. We ate our sandwiches in the meadow and I had kept the prepared ring in the coin pocket of my jeans. Carol thought I was standing up to dust myself off after finishing the sandwich, but I removed the ring from my pocket and twisted down on my knee to ask her to marry me. Luckily, she said yes. The ring was a little too big at first and slipped off easily, so Carol handed it back to me for safekeeping on the hike home. We were laughing and nervous and found it hard not to celebrate with every passing hiker. By the time we got back to the car we were pretty hungry again, so we stopped for a burrito at Puente's Taqueria in San Rafael before driving home to start the process of notifying family and friends.