First, please accept my apologies for my lapse in posts. I have much to report. In March, Michael and I went to Rome, Italy for three days, where he popped the question, and I popped an answer. What follows is an account of that occasion, along with a lesson on the best laid plans...
We originally planned a trip to Cairo, Egypt, a place very high on both of our bucket lists.
"How many of your girlfriends can say they got engaged in front of the Pyramids at Giza ?" (By the way, Michael has an inability to keep anything secret when it comes to surprises. So, yes, I kinda knew this was coming.)
But, alas, after decades of oppression, the country decides to erupt into a fire of political rebellion weeks before our slated vacation. (Last summer we were planning to go to Greece, so this has become a trend with us. Plan a trip, and the country of destination will explode.)
So, Rome it was. After all, Michael is Italian, with one of those long last names that ends in an "o," so it's fitting we would do this in his homeland. Now, I may have known it was coming, but I didn't have any idea when or where he would do this thing, so I put it out of my mind and tried to forget the whole reason for the trip so I could kind of be surprised, a little. Well, I guess I did too good a job at this.
Day One, we arrived in the morning after an overnight flight. Serious travelers that we are, we hit the ground running. After a couple pizzas and Coke Lights, we saw the Vatican and climbed St. Peter's dome. I didn't figure he would do it on this day, since we were both jet-lagged, dirty, and unkempt (not to mention out of breath after the bajillion steps up and down the basilica). I was correct.
The next day, we had slated Trevi Fountain, Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini (affectionately referred to as "monk bones," but more on that later), the Colosseum and Palatine Hill, The Roman Forum, and San Clemente Basilica (with an altar to Mithra). Like I said, we're serious. First stop was Trevi Fountain. We arrived pretty early in the day, and the sun was obliquely shining on half the statues, the rest in shadows. On this cool spring morning, we had the place virtually to ourselves, except for a small cluster of Korean nuns who took turns snapping each other's pictures in front of the fountain. As is customary, we each tossed a coin over our shoulder into the fountain, so we would return one day, and then we departed.
Okay, back to the "monk bones." At Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, the remains of over 4000 Capuchin monks have been made into an homage to mortality. It's Thich Nhat Hahn meets Thomas Merton. Google it and see what images come up, because there is no way to describe it with any justice here. Suffice it to say, among the exhibit is a plaque with the following sentiment in five languages: "What you are now, we used to be; what we are now, you will be."
Chills.
Of course, when we arrived for this much-anticipated creep-fest, it was closed, for of all things, "our dear friend Enrico's funeral." But it politely requested, "Please return later today after 2:00." So, next stop, Colosseum. We would come back to see the monk bones later. We're serious, but flexible.
When we got to the Colosseum, Michael paid for a tour guide, which in addition to giving us all sorts of cool info about the building, would let us bypass the lines and get in quickly. Unfortunately, our tour guide droned on and on about boring stuff and led us into dull interior nooks. By the time she was done, we had only twenty minutes left to see the upper levels and get good pictures of the sunny, sweeping vistas of the ruinous structure, and the stairs were on the opposite side of the Colosseum. We were rushed, and Michael was not too happy.
On Palatine Hill, we had a better tour guide and got lots of good pictures. On our way down onto the Forum, we passed a hill covered in little, white, daisy-like flowers. Seated in the grass, a young girl posed while another girl took photos of her.
"Baby, do you wanna get your picture made in the flowers?" Michael asked, mocking me. After living in Alabama for seventeen years, I unfortunately picked up this colloquial way of referring to photography. "Get your pitchur made."
"No, honey. I'm good, thanks."
We then made our way through the Forum, seeing Caesar's grave, stopping to take pics, and reading our guide book along the way. Later, when we arrived at San Clemente, we discovered that we had one hour to kill before the basilica reopened at 2:00, what appeared to be the magical hour for churches in Rome. I guess everyone really does go home and take a nap in the middle of the day. Sitting on a curb in front of the building, Michael confessed to me.
"Baby, today has not gone as planned."
He went on to tell me that it was supposed to happen at the Colosseum, because I had said I was most looking forward to seeing that. There, he had planned to take me aside, kneel, and propose, extending the ring to me under the sparkling sunlight, where it would shine most glorious. I would say yes, and then we would kiss, and get our pitchur made.
Not so. After calling the tour guide a few choice words, he explained that he decided to find a spot on Palatine Hill, but every time he thought, "This is a nice place..." some family of six would come around the corner. So then he thought the Forum. Ancient, cool, lots of little green hills with flowers on them. But I had rebuffed his attempt to get me into the grass. So, as we sat on a stoop, scraping the last remnants of pistachio gelato from the bottoms of our cups, he threw out an idea. More like a threat.
"Baby," he started, setting aside his empty cup, "I think it's gonna be monk bones."
"What? No! You can't do it there."
"Yep. Monk bones."
"I'll say no," I warned.
"Think about it. You know me. How would you describe me to your friends? Am I Sparkling Sunlight at the Colosseum? Or am I Monk Bones? Be honest. Your boyfriend is Monk Bones, and you know it."
Michael does wear a lot of shirts with skulls on them, Halloween is his favorite holiday, and he does have a tattoo of Michael the Archangel stamping out a demon on his left arm... He had a point. Still, I balked at the notion of getting engaged in a crypt. It seemed a bit too Dylan Thomas to me.
"There are lots of beautiful places in this city," I told him. "I'm sure you will find the right opportunity. And not at monk bones."
After San Clemente (one of my favorites, by the way--all three layers of Rome in one building!), we went to see the much anticipated monk remains. All I can say is...wow. Never seen anything like it. Thankfully, Michael refrained from dropping to one knee amongst a bunch of robed skeletons with scythes. Although I suppose that might have its own romantic charm, if your names are Gomez and Morticia.
So then we meandered back through the city toward our hotel, stopping along the way at Trevi Fountain again. This time, it was teeming with tourists, tour groups, and peddlers, who forcefully shoved flowers in your hands unless you kept them buried in your pockets. Makeshift kiosks had been set up in front, where earlier that morning there had been only smiling nuns in white habits.
"Wow. Look at this place now," Michael said. "We had it to ourselves this morning."
"Yeah, what a difference," I noted, shaking my head and turning away from the obnoxious vendor trying to sell me a fake flower.
"Baby...I messed up, didn't I?" (Only he didn't say "messed." He's a New York Italian, remember.)
"Nah, it was cold, remember?" I said, trying to soothe him.
Truthfully, I really thought it was going to be at Trevi, as cliche as that might be. I felt badly for him now. What he planned had not worked out, and I could tell he felt pressured to come up with something on the fly, which is really not our style. See, Michael and I are both planners. We like to have things all mapped out ahead of time. He even drew out this whole scheme for us on a paper towel one night (after a couple martinis), back when the plan was still at Giza, with a pyramid, an airplane, a ring (which I had thought was a star), and an officiant holding a book. Its rendering may have been elementary, but the sentiment was genuine. I scribbled an "OK" on the paper towel, and I have it saved in our travel journal.
Now, in addition to the missing pyramids, yet another element of his plan had gone awry. Poor guy.
It was getting late in the afternoon, so we decided to wander toward Piazza Navona for some dinner. While Michael snapped some pictures of the three fountains in the setting sun, I ducked into a restaurant for a potty stop. When I came out, I saw him closing up his "man purse" we had purchased at TJ Maxx right before this trip. (Go ahead and laugh, but it is way better than a backpack, trust me.)
He saw me and smiled, then took my hand as we walked into the center of the Piazza toward the big fountain in the middle. He halted in front of a bench, then sat us down next to each other, facing the fountain.
"Well, baby," he started. "I've been trying to do this all day..."
I smiled. He was laughing now.
"And this is as good a place as any."
He slid off the bench onto his knee, extending his pinkie finger. Perched halfway on it was the ring he had insisted on showing me in the sunlight of his bedroom window the day before we left Atlanta.
"Will ya marry me, baby? Because, I love you."
It may not have been exactly as he had pictured, but he couldn't have planned it any better than this. Sunset at a beautiful fountain in a Roman piazza. After I accepted, we kissed, got our pitchur made, and had a lovely dinner on a patio overlooking the fountains.
Michael may not have realized it when he made the decision to whip that ring out of his man purse, but the one he chose to make our "special engagement fountain" just happens to be Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers, and in the center of it is an Egyptian obelisk, topped with a dove holding an olive branch.
The Four Rivers represented are the Ganges (symbolizing Asia), the Nile (Africa), the Danube (Europe), and the Plate (the Americas). With our wanderlust (and Michael's flight benefits), I'm pretty sure we will see them all. Both of us long to see the ruins at Macchu Picchu, ancient Buddhist temples in bamboo forests, castles in Europe, and the night sky over an African savannah. So how perfect is it that we sealed this life-partner deal in front of a fountain in his home country that just happens to symbolize the four corners of the world, with an Egyptian sculpture in its center, topped with the universal symbol of peace? It may not have been a pyramid, but well done, Michael...Well done.
Compare that to the sparking sunlight at the Colosseum.
Or Monk Bones.
