Carter and I met in eighth grade homeroom, when we were 13 years old. After I turned down his date requests a few times (sorry Cart!), I allowed Carter into my heart in a special way — we became best friends when we were 16 years old. On Christmas Eve 2006, my best friend proposed to me. Here is the memoir I wrote about that magical winter evening.
The Promise of a Stocking
As I stood in the candy aisle and looked at the blur of red and green in front of me, I was overwhelmed with the spirit of Christmas. I scanned the shelves of foil-wrapped chocolate nutcrackers and elegant boxes of cherry cordials, peanut-butter filled chocolate snowmen and eggnog-flavored hard candies. I hadn’t yet filled the stocking, but I knew that the games and gadgets I had purchased in the previous weeks would be sufficient to fill it to the top. What I was looking for now were the treats that would transform the stocking from an adequate cache of amusements to a perfectly plump and overflowing bundle of bliss. My obsessive attention to elf-like details must have been inherited from my mother, dubbed “Sandy-Claus” by her clever brood.
I took it upon myself every Christmas Eve to assess my weeks’ worth of purchases, to tally up the gifts in my head, to make sure no two packages were wrapped or labeled just alike, to plan the order in which each item should be opened by the recipient. But it was different this year.
I no longer lived at home with Sandy-Claus, but instead shared a first-floor, two-bedroom apartment with my boyfriend. Over the past few months, Carter had assumed the role of a man, or even a husband. He dressed in shiny, black shoes, crisp slacks, and button-down dress shirts. He closed the bathroom door when he showered in the morning, containing the light in the space and away from my closed eyes. He dressed in the quiet of the second bedroom, and only stirred me to kiss me on the lips and say two things: “I love you” and “Have a great day.” His aftershave lingered in my nostrils when he stepped into the hallway, through the living room, and out the apartment door. He took the apartment shuttle to the train station and the train to the city. He worked in a tall building, in an office, doing complicated, mathematical things and earning a salary higher than either of us had ever known. He paid most of the rent. He came home and dried the dishes I washed and folded the laundry I dried. I wanted to complement his assumed role. This year’s Christmas stocking had to be especially special.
I looked at the chocolates and candies as I dug my cell phone out of my denim purse. I pressed and held the “2” key and listened to the ring.
“Hi honey,” he answered.
“Hi sweetheart. I’m on my way home; I just stopped at the supermarket to pick up a few things,” I informed him. “I love you so much,” I added with emphasis.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“Nothing in particular. I just love you,” I responded. I hadn’t heard the suspicion in his voice.
When I pulled open the sliding glass door that was the back entrance to our apartment, Carter was waiting just inside to wrap his warm arms around me and kiss me in greeting. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“I want you to come into the bedroom with me,” he said. Also nothing out of the ordinary. Carter likes to do romantic things for me, and I thought that he was giving me an early Christmas present . . . pajamas, perhaps, or a pretty necklace.
I walked into the darkened bedroom, which was glowing with the white light of a dozen-and-a-half tea light candles. A little out of the ordinary, but I wasn’t surprised. I imagined that the candles were a prelude to the Christmas Eve gift I was about to receive. I noticed that the carpeted floor was bare, devoid of the piles of laundry that I had been meaning to do for days. Maybe he had done my laundry for me. My eyes were heavy and my body aching with the need for sleep. Clean laundry would be a welcome gift, for I knew I had hours of stocking-stuffing and gift-wrapping ahead of me.
“I wrote a poem for you,” he told me. I was sure that the poem would answer the mystery of the Christmas Eve gift. I was warmed by his thoughtfulness and wished I could shake the lethargy from my bones.
Carter read to me. He recounted our story . . . how we had met in eighth grade, how we became friends in high school, and how we had shared our first kiss. He read about the year we went to different colleges, and the year that we were reunited. He read about specific dates and specific moments, and in juxtaposition to his mature attention to detail, each line rhymed with uncomplicated innocence.
Halfway through the poem, Carter’s voice quivered. I forced open my weary eyes and studied his face. This was unfamiliar, the trembling lips that kissed me in the mornings, and the quaking, stubbly chin that brushed against my dependent child’s flesh. I tried to muster up some strength from my limbs, to steady him with my collectedness. His voice faded, drowned out by the tremors of his jaw.
The rhyming pulse of the poem pierced through the thumping in my ears and stunned me to attention.
“I promise to love you for the rest of my life,” he read.
An icy cold flooded my body. “ . . . the rest of my life . . .” Carter’s face swayed in front of me. Splotches of dizzying color danced in front of my eyes. My head felt like a helium-filled balloon being untied from my neck. My ears thumped louder with the pulse of the poem. “ . . . the rest of my life . . .” My head thumped: Wife. Wife. Wife.
I had asked myself before. I had practiced the answer so that my fear would not swallow up the words I knew I wanted to say. But I looked at Carter with the expectation of an ending different than the one that the poem suggested. I waited for him to present me with a gift . . . perhaps the earrings with the pink hearts I had seen within the locked case in my favorite jewelry store. I looked at him again. I heard the blood rushing in my ears. He lowered his knee towards the floor. My breath became shallow. The splotches of color in front of my eyes blurred and swirled together.
“I promise to love you for the rest of my life. Tamara Hart Rosenbloom, will you be my wife?” Just as I had practiced, the word “wife” hung in the air but a moment when I cried, “Yes!”
