Seven Oysters

Yesterday, I tried to keep track of what I was feeling.

Not because I thought I would forget the day. I don't think there's a chance in hell of that. But because I knew it was one of those days where everything was about to change, and I wanted to remember who I was in the hours before it did.

At 1:34 yesterday afternoon, I wrote this:

I don't know what I'm feeling.

That was true.

I'd been...amped up isn't quite the right phrase, but something close to it. High strung. Restless. What I imagine a tweaker feels like when their meth supply is down to the last...bowl, or however the fuck they consume it.

A general angst.

But mine was laid gently on a bed of happiness, with a heart full of love powering the fucking machine.

In a few hours, I was going to propose to the woman who would become my wife. My life partner. The woman I want beside me through thick and fucking thin. And I wanted the words to come out right. I wanted the moment to be right. I wanted this to be one of those memories that would bring a smile to her face twenty years from now.

Assuming she said yes.

Okay, that's bullshit.

I knew she was going to say yes.

We'd talked about marriage. Several fucking times. I knew what I was going to ask. I knew what I was going to say. I knew where I was going to say it. I had the ring. Samantha knew what was happening. Everything was planned.

And somehow I was still fucking nervous.

I even had to work yesterday morning.

I had two meetings I couldn't just decide not to show up for.

Welcome to leadership.

So I went up on site, attended my meetings, and got to say good morning to my team. I got to see their smiles as they started their day. I had a couple of genuinely meaningful conversations with people. And, as I often do, I wandered up and down between the cubicles, spinning my screwdriver over my thumb in time with my steps, talking to whoever looked like they might need a kind word.

Somewhere in there, one of my employees wished me luck that night.

Yeah.

I fucking suck at secrets.

I'd told damn near everyone that I was going to propose.

I admitted to him that I was actually a little nervous, which felt strange coming out of my mouth.

He laughed.

"Yeah, you look it and sound it."

Well, fuck you too.

But he wasn't wrong.

I think I was nervous because I wanted everything to go flawlessly. Without a hitch. I wanted this one moment to somehow be exempt from the chaos that seems to follow me around like a particularly loyal fucking dog.

By 4:08, I had settled down a little.

I'd come home early from work and watched Dawna get ready while we talked. Eventually we decided to go have lunch at Saigon Café.

I fucking love Saigon Café.

Yes, the food is amazing, but food is rarely the only reason I become attached to a place. For me, it always comes down to people. I can get great food somewhere, but if the people are douchey, then fuck that place.

But Hua and Leonard are just genuinely good fucking people. They've been a fixture in Santa Fe for decades, and I love going there. I love the food. I love the hospitality. I love the conversations. I love walking into a place where the people matter as much as what's on the plate.

And yesterday, I got to share that little piece of my life with Dawna.

That mattered to me.

She loves Asian food, so I told her some of my favorites on the menu but encouraged her to explore and find something that sounded good to her.

She ordered the lemongrass chicken thighs.

One of my fucking favorites.

And she loved them.

Of course she did.

Even better, I got to introduce Dawna to the owners as my future wife.

Technically, at that particular moment, I hadn't actually proposed yet.

Technically, she hadn't said yes.

But I fucking hate technicalities.

A few hours later, we were at Overlook with Samantha taking pictures of us.

The photo shoot itself was amazing. We got some fucking incredible shots, and Samantha did what Samantha does. But the entire time, underneath all of it, I was nervous as fuck.

Then the moment came.

I turned toward Dawna and started talking.

And I was fucking trembling.

Not from fear. I wasn't afraid she'd say no. We'd talked about marriage. I knew her answer. It was something else entirely.

It was the pure fucking emotional gravity of the moment.

This was it.

These were words I was only ever going to say once, to the woman I wanted beside me for the rest of my life.

And the words fucking mattered.

So I said them.

Every fucking one of them.

Clearly. Deliberately. With intent.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I realized I was right on the edge of tears.

And I didn't care.

I had Dawna's complete attention, but she had mine too. I was fucking captivated by her eyes. Everything else disappeared. Samantha disappeared. The camera disappeared. The overlook disappeared.

For those few moments, there was only this woman standing in front of me and the words I'd been carrying around waiting to give her.

Then I got down on one knee.

And I asked Dawna Lee Russom to marry me.

She said yes.

Fuck.

She said yes.

She loved the ring. Samantha captured the whole thing, and I already know there are going to be some incredible photographs from that moment.

It was perfect.

Except there's no such fucking thing as a perfect plan.

The universe apparently saw everything going smoothly and decided that shit needed to stop immediately.

The drive back to Santa Fe was a parade of people demonstrating why driver's licenses should probably be considerably harder to obtain. Drivers sucked fucking assholes. Good God, they were terrible.

But whatever.

We made it home.

And waiting there was supposed to be the final piece of my plan: Three dozen oysters.

Now, oysters might seem like a strange fucking choice for the end of an engagement night, but these weren't just oysters.

Dawna used to hate oysters.

Then one day she happened to be at my house when I had a shipment arrive for a party. Pacific oysters from Hama Hama, prepared a very particular way to highlight that delicate creaminess that makes a good Pacific oyster so fucking incredible.

I convinced her to try one.

And apparently I ruined her perfectly good hatred of oysters forever.

She fucking loves them now.

So I ordered three dozen for our engagement night.

They were supposed to be waiting at the house when we got home.

They weren't.

I checked the delivery notice.

There was a photograph.

Of a porch.

Not my fucking porch.

Of course.

Because apparently asking the universe to allow one entire day to unfold according to plan was unreasonable.

I'd paid extra for two-day shipping. These were fresh fucking oysters sitting somewhere in Santa Fe in August, and I had absolutely no intention of letting the night end with them slowly becoming a biological weapon on some stranger's porch.

So I went looking.

It was dark. It was late. I didn't give a fuck.

Luckily, the delivery driver had only managed to miss my house by one.

They were next door.

The second place I looked.

Third if you count my own goddamned front porch.

Oysters recovered.

Crisis averted.

I brought them home, shucked them onto a bed of crushed ice, and dressed them with homemade cucumber mignonette, cucumber, red bell pepper, jalapeño, shallots, and a dash of Tabasco.

Seven oysters per serving.

Because I fucking love the number seven.

We sat together and ate them.

And they were amazing.

More importantly, Dawna was happy.

Sometime after midnight, after the nerves and the photo shoot and the proposal and the ring and the shitty drivers and the great oyster rescue of 2026, I finally had a chance to understand what had just happened.

The day hadn't gone flawlessly.

Of course it fucking hadn't.

That's not how life works.

Hell, maybe that's not even what I wanted.

Because our life isn't going to be flawless either. There will be wrong turns and broken motorcycles and fucked-up deliveries. There will be arguments and disappointments and days when one of us needs the other to be the voice of reason. There will be plans that fall completely to shit.

And we'll figure them out.

Together.

That's the part that matters.

Yesterday morning, I woke up next to the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

Last night, I went to bed next to my fiancée.

There were fourteen empty oyster shells sitting in the trash.

There was a ring on her finger.

And there was absolutely nowhere else in this fucking universe I wanted to be.