by Donna Poole
She was clueless about love, mostly because she’d grown up reading Grace Livingston Hill novels. If you’ve never heard of those books, that’s okay; I’ll explain. They are like Hallmark Movies on steroids. Not only does the knight in shining armor swoop in on a white horse and rescue the damsel in distress, the knight owns a stable full of white horses and an entire armor factory. When said damsel looks at charming knight, she almost swoons. Her world tilts and spins, and her heart knows he is her one and only, forever and ever, amen. I add the “amen” because the novels are Christian romance books.
Not only did she read and love Grace Livingston Hill novels, the clueless girl adored Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her favorite was Number 43:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely; as they turn from Praise;
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, –I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! –and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
She grew up to be quite independent and struggled to have compassion for anyone with damsel in distress syndrome, but still, you can’t read that many Grace Livingston Hill novels and escape unaffected. A part of her still yearned for that mysterious knight in shining armor who would swoop in on his white horse and, if she didn’t need rescuing, would at least carry her off to a place where they could make a beautiful life together.
She dreamed of a love where she’d walk, arms entwined, with Prince Charming, through an ancient apple orchard and recite to each other classic poetry.
His favorite poem was:
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
My aunt has a lawnmower.
Can you swim?
They’d known each other and argued with each other since they’d been preschool age. She’d told him to stop chewing his crepe paper bow tie in church cherub choir. He’d ignored her and kept chewing.
When they’d learn to spell their names, she’d told him he spelled his wrong.
When they grew older, their friendship deepened, but the arguments continued. When they stopped arguing long enough for him to say, “I love you,” she was a little shocked.
Her response was not what he’d hoped for. “How does a person really know something like that for sure?”
She was pretty sure if one of them needed rescuing it would be him and she’d have to do it.
There were so many things she liked about him though, and not the least was his crazy sense of humor. Finally, she wiped away enough storybook cobwebs to realize she did love him, and she told him so.
Then began the proposals. Yes, that word is plural, proposals. He’d ask her to marry him; she look hopefully at him, and he’d laugh, pull out a ring he’d gotten from a bubble gum machine, tug on her pony tail, and walk away.
One day they stood on top of Stone Mountain, Georgia. His parents, sister, and brother-in-law were at the bottom of the mountain, but a friend stood right next to them. As they looked out over the awesome view, he said to her, “Will you marry me?”
She gave him another quick, hopeful look. Wait. Come on. Who proposes with a third person standing right here? No one, that’s who.
“Ha! I’m not going to fall for that again!”
His hurt look and stiff posture were her first clues. He’d been serious. He refused to talk to her the rest of the day, a bit awkward, since they spent the rest of the day with his family and their friend. She became a bit frustrated with her prince not-so-charming. How could she have known he’d planned that moment for months?
Later that evening as they sat alone on the couch in his sister’s living room, he said, “Do you want to marry me or not? And this is your last chance.”
She laughed. It wasn’t like any proposal she’d ever read about in her books. There was no recitation of Number 43 from Sonnets from the Portuguese. No white horse was in sight, and the spring evening in Georgia was way too hot for shining armor. But she saw his heart, and she loved what she saw. Besides, she could be quite the brat herself on occasion, and they both knew it.
She threw her arms around him. “Oh, yes, I do want to marry you. I love you.”
And now, we’ll look the other way, but suffice it to say, he was no longer mad. He didn’t have the ring yet; that would come later.
She drove home from work one night. The sun had set hours before. All she could think of was how tired she was and how she wanted to curl up in bed with a good book. She pulled in the driveway, and his car was there. Her heart sunk. She loved him; she really did, but she was just too tired for company.
“Want to go for a ride?” he asked.
“Not tonight, please. I’m too tired.”
“Donna,” her mother said, “if Johnnie wants to go for a ride, you should go for a ride.”
Can’t he see how tired I am? Won’t he change his mind and say we can go another time?
She wasn’t happy about it, but she got in the car. He wasn’t happy, because once again, a major plan was dissolving like butter in a hot pan, and that made him grumpy. Neither of them said a word until they stopped at the airport.
“Open the glove compartment,” Prince not-so-charming ordered.
“Did you break your arm?” the bratty damsel not in distress replied. “Open it yourself.”
“I said, open the glove compartment!”
They glared at each other. An onlooker would have said they looked more like two angry three-year-old’s than the nineteen-year old’s they were. Finally, she sighed. She was too tired to argue. She opened the glove compartment. There was a beautiful diamond solitaire in a gold tiffany setting.
She looked at the engagement ring feeling frustration and joy. Would there never be any poetry?
“It’s a small diamond. I could have gotten a bigger one for the same price, but the jeweler said this one didn’t have any flaws, and I wanted a perfect one. You know. Like you.” There it was. The poetry. More beautiful to her ears than Number 43.
Perfect? Like me? The me who has been arguing with you since we were preschoolers? The me who just refused to talk to you all the way to this airport?
Let’s look the other way again; suffice it to say, they didn’t sit as far apart on the way home from the airport as they did on the way there.
The date at the airport was May 24, 1968. Yesterday, they celebrated the fifty second anniversary of that date by sitting by a lake and talking about yesterday, today, and tomorrow. They’d made a beautiful life together, or rather, God had done that through them. She’d needed a lot of rescuing through the years, and he’d done it all with a cheerful smile and arms ready to comfort. He’d become quite the Prince Charming.
His favorite poem is still the same one; he laughed today when he repeated it for her so she could type it into this article. Life has all kinds of poetry, and she’s come to think that laughter is one of its best.
