The Proposal
One summer evening, Andrey asked me to meet him in Georgetown for dinner. Since we live nearby and we often go out for dinner, I didn’t think anything of it. We met at Bodega, a Spanish tapas restaurant, where we had two pitchers of sangria and more tapas than we care to admit. The dinner was delicious, we were having a great time! Then he proposed we get frozen yogurt, after this incredibly filling meal. I suggested cupcakes since we were very close to the best cupcake shop in town, but he was very insistent about the frozen yogurt, so I couldn’t say no! With bowls of frozen yogurt in hand, we walked down to a park near the Ukrainian Embassy and sat on a bench to eat our froyo. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Andrey was re-creating our first date (We met for dinner at a Spanish tapas restaurant in NYC, and then got frozen yogurt and sat down in a park in the Ukrainian neighborhood of the East Village).
As we are sitting and eating our frozen yogurt, Andrey starts talking about how his mom has posted an article on her blog that is lovey-dovey and he thinks that I would really like to read it. But before he can show me the blog post, I walk over to throw away my ice cream bowl and shriek at the sight of a rat!!! I immediately run out of the park, and ask Andrey if we can just go home. (This is where the story starts to sound more like Goldilocks, than a proposal, but stick with me…) He tries to convince me that there won’t be anymore rats and to come sit back down with him. As I was apprehensively considering rejoining him on the bench, another rat scurries near me and I adamantly tell him we need to leave. He reluctantly gives in and luckily, there were other places nearby that he had been scouting out.
We start walking along the canal in Georgetown, and Andrey takes me to sit down on a bench near a boat on the canal. We sit down for a moment and he pulls out this piece of paper, but then I get up and say that the bench isn’t well lit and that I can’t read anything sitting there! Again, we get up and he takes me to the Georgetown waterfront, there we find plenty of benches, that are well lit and rat free! So we finally sit down (third time is a charm!), and Andrey unfolds the piece of paper and asks me to read it. Thinking that he must not have read it, I started reading aloud.
As I got closer to the end and read that “…one summer day… as they sat in a small park, eating frozen yogurt”, I started to think…. hey, this story sounds familiar…. Then I read “and he got down on one knee” and I look at Andrey and he is on ONE KNEE! All I can think is – “ITS HAPPENING!” I started crying, I didn’t even finish reading the paper and I didn’t really hear what he was saying, I just started saying “YES, YES, YES!” I didn’t even see the ring as he hadn’t yet opened the box, but when he did and put it on my ring finger it wouldn’t slip passed my knuckle, so I accepted my new pinky ring. I knew we wanted to capture this moment, so I asked a passerby to take a picture of us (since both of our phones were dead) and send it to us.
We walked home from the park, I was still beaming, smiling from ear to ear. When we opened our apartment door, our song – Lucky – by Kat Edmonson was playing (I am sure our neighbors loved us – Andrey had put the song on repeat since 5:30 when he left the apartment before dinner!) and champagne was ready for us to toast with.
The next day at work, I shared the good news with my colleagues. Andrey sent me two beautiful flower arrangements with my favorite flowers – Gerbera Daisies. I spent most of my morning just staring at my ring… My manager, Doug, ended up sending me home early that day, he simply said – “you are useless today, just go home and celebrate”
Once we finally had the ring re-sized, Andrey got down on one knee again to put it on the right finger!
