THE CLOUDS SAILED ACROSS THE AZURE SKY as the late afternoon sun brushed them with a mellow midsummer gold.  From the porch on the house in Rockport, I had a panoramic view of the Atlantic ocean and the July sky.  We had left New York a couple of days before and had been visiting friends on our way up to Maine for a week at the old Claremont Hotel in Southwest Harbor on Mt. Desert Island.

We had stopped in Boston and stayed with Gary for a night and were in Rockport for a few days with Faith and Beth before heading up to Maine to see our friend Pam in Saco and then up to Southwest Harbor.  The house in Rockport (which I’ve described here before) is a century-old victorian, perched on top of the rocks and looking out to the Atlantic across the salt marshes and beaches.

We had just retuned from the Cape Ann Market where we had picked up several items we needed to cook dinner.  Faith and Joe had abruptly been called back to San Francisco and Beth went back to Boston for work the next morning, so we found ourselves alone in the house on the rock.  I was fixing dinner and setting the table, occasionally stepping outside onto the porch to look at the ocean and calm my nerves, because I was a man on a mission.

In my pocket was my great grandmother’s diamond ring which I planned to give to Mary Elizabeth that night along with the humble request to marry me.  I was pretty sure she was going to say yes – we had talked about it before, but I was still apprehensive.  What if she said no? I wasn’t sure what I would do if she did. I had planned to wait until getting to Maine to propose, thinking that the right moment would present itself.  We had talked about that too and agreed that public proposals weren’t for us.  Nor were tricks like hiding the ring in a shrimp cocktail or something.  This was serious, private business.

So when Faith and Joe said they were leaving and we’d have the house to ourselves, I thought it would be the perfect setting.  It was private and picturesque.  We had been there before and would hopefully return many times in the future, hopefully as a married couple and even perhaps with our children.
So as I prepared dinner and set the table, I went over and over in my mind what I would say.  Dinner went well (pasta if I recall correctly) and then very simply and without too much fanfare, I described how happy I had been in the last year and how much I hoped it would continue and said, “Mary Elizabeth Luebke, will you marry me?”

That was on July 22, 1992. A lot has happened in those 20 years – some of it very good, and some of it very bad – but what has been a constant is our unwavering love for one another.  It goes without saying that I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.  And so would she.