Love at the Speed of Email (23 page)

On February 14th Mike was out in the field and totally out
of contact. As he put it later, he was “celebrating Valentine’s Day in true PNG
style, by sleeping in a village surrounded by other men’s wives.”

“One thing we're not going to have to worry about this
year,” I wrote in response to this, “is setting any expectations too high for
future celebration of events like Valentine’s Day or birthdays.”

Washington,
D.C., USA

Three weeks later, on Mike’s birthday, I was in Washington,
D.C., again for work. Perhaps, Mike had suggested, while I was there I might
like to meet his parents, who lived nearby? I thought this over and then
shrugged and agreed. After all, I reasoned, Mike had braved my parents’ house
within two hours of meeting me; I could brave his alone. So on a cold spring
night, I borrowed Michelle’s car, bought a bunch of flowers, and showed up for
dinner at Mike’s parents’ house.

Mike’s parents were utterly hospitable, if seemingly a
little puzzled by my presence on the scene.

“So,” his mother ventured shortly after I arrived, while I
was still processing the framed high school portrait of Mike that was sitting
in the living room, “how did you two first meet? Was it in Thailand?”

I tore my eyes away from a smiling eighteen-year-old Mike
with some difficulty.

What? Sure, Mike
hasn’t seen them since we met, but hasn’t he told them the whole story?

“Not exactly,” I said. “Here’s how it happened …”

After my own mother’s chicken-dance antics in the kitchen on
the night that Mike arrived in Australia, I was gleeful to have plenty to
report back to Mike by email after dinner.
 

“Your parents were utterly hospitable,” I started my letter.
“A turkey had been roasted, rolls baked, profiteroles procured and fruit salad
made. And your mother will no doubt tell you she did not show me the baby
albums. That is true. She thoughtfully left them on the coffee table and I
looked through them all by myself while dinner was being put on the table.

“I can also report the following:

“1. You have quite a considerable pile of stuff stored in
that house. I think it is still less than what I have stored in my parents’
house, but even after looking it over carefully during the parent-guided tour
of the basement, I’m not sure.

“2. Your mother made me pose for photographs before I left
because she said she would be in terrible trouble with the other women at the
office if she went in on Monday morning without pictures.

“3. Within half an hour of meeting
me
your mother asked whether we were going to have an e-marriage. In her defense
the flow of the conversation went like this: I explained how we met and ended
with, ‘so now we're e-dating.’ Your Mum said, ‘E-dating. What comes next, an
e-marriage and e-kids?’”

Los
Angeles, USA

Three weeks later, on
my
birthday, Mike was out in the field again. But I did have a birthday present to
open that morning when I woke up.

He had sent me a
billum
(a woven bag used by villagers in PNG to carry
everything from vegetables to babies) and a CD full of photographs. This wasn’t
just any
billum
.
Mike had clearly gone to some trouble to find the most outrageously bright red,
pink and orange
billum
in existence. Then he’d carried this
billum
with him everywhere for several weeks, taking
pictures along the way to demonstrate everything I could do with this most
useful of gifts.

The
billum
had sat beside Mike on the porch of his house. It had been slung over his
shoulder while he went jogging, snorkeling, swimming, scuba diving, and did
sunrise yoga. The
billum
had accompanied Mike to the office, the markets, and on Skype dates. The
billum
had even
taken showers under the drain spout. The last photo on the disk showed Mike,
the
billum
,
and a handwritten happy-birthday sign with a big red heart on it.
 

I laughed at these seventy-five photos until I almost cried.

Then I read his card and, again, almost cried.

“Do you think these feelings are going to continue?” it
started. “I never thought it would happen to me. I was always a bit skeptical
about becoming paralyzed by love. No, that couldn’t happen to me. And now it
has. …

“I still feel a bit uneasy about this. I never expected it
and now it’s here,” he
finished,
a page and a half
later.
“Not skeptical anymore.
But perhaps scared of
what will happen. Will these feeling last? Will we make it?”

I’d always wondered how someone is caught by surprise by a
marriage proposal in this day and age. I mean, if you’re in a solid
relationship and you’re both good communicators, surely you’d have some idea if
one party in that equation were scheming to pop the question? I mean, how dumb
are people?

So, yeah, apparently I’m dumb.

Well, that’s one possibility. Another possibility is that
Mike is crazy. Or Mike could be both dumb and crazy. Or I could be. Or maybe we
both are.

Even now I’m still undecided on this point, but let me back
up and set the scene, because setting the scene is a valuable life skill that
should be exercised during the telling of all stories (and quite possibly, I’ve
come to believe, in advance of all major life-altering decisions).

Los
Angeles, USA

By April, three months after first meeting in Australia,
Mike and I had made our first tentative forays toward discussing when Mike was
going to leave Papua New Guinea and move to L.A.

His contract in PNG wasn’t up until December, and I didn’t
let myself spend much time considering the possibility that he might cut it
short. I knew what I was getting into when I signed on to this relationship, I
told myself. I was determined not to be
that
woman – the one who expects her man to rearrange all his plans and priorities
around her preferences.

No, we hadn’t exactly discussed it yet, but I had it all
worked out in my head. Mike was going to stay in PNG until December, as he’d
planned. We would soldier through this year of long-distance dating, spending a
month together in the U.S. in May and two weeks in September in Cambodia. We’d
meet again in Australia for Christmas and then Mike would move to L.A. in
January. With all continuing to go well, we’d date for four to six months while
living in the same city and then (and here was another topic I wasn’t letting
myself think too much about) we would get engaged.

It was such a
good
plan.
Such a
sensible
plan.

I just assumed that it was also Mike’s plan.

So I was very surprised when, in April, Mike dropped the
first hints that he might consider leaving PNG in September rather than
December.

It was raining in
Madang
that day.
When it rained we couldn’t talk, because the internet connection had slowed way
down. We could usually, however, instant-message. So that’s what we were doing
when Mike, mid-conversation, joked about quitting his job.

After I read this comment I didn’t send any words back
straight away. I just used the party emoticon, the one where a little yellow
face, crowned with a purple hat, is tooting a paper horn and streamers are
floating down. Instant-message conversations are not entirely devoid of
nonverbal signals if you make full use of the emoticons.

Mike laughed. This I know because he wrote “LOL” (laugh out
loud).
Twice.

“Not fair,” he wrote. “You weren’t supposed to have that reaction.”

“Look,” I wrote, “just because I fully support you staying
in PNG for the year doesn’t mean I wouldn’t throw a party if you decided not
to.”

“So what about perseverance?”
Mike
teased.

“Stuff perseverance,” I shot back. “It’s like a vaccine.
Once you’ve had a dose or two you’re good for ten years.”

“Fifteen,” Mike wrote. “Twenty.
Life.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“I wish,” Mike said.

I sent a smiley face.

“We were talking about this over here last night,” Mike
said. “The consensus was that perseverance is worth it if there’s some sort of
future goal you want to achieve.”

“What qualifies as a worthwhile goal?” I said.

“I threw that one out there, but no responses,” Mike said,
“and you don’t expect me to have my own original answer now, do you?”

“Oh, no, sorry.
That is asking a
bit much,” I said. “But I just think you can set up anything as a goal, but
some goals are not going to be worth it.”

“A worthwhile goal isn't just ‘I made a commitment and I'll
be damned if I renege even if it
kills
me’??” Mike replied.

“I don’t think so.” I said. “That’s just being unable to
reroute despite changing circumstances. I don’t think that alone is a good
enough goal in most situations.”

“What about if the joy in the situation is
gone.
Then perseverance isn't worthwhile?” Mike typed.

“Joy gone for how long?”
I asked.
“It's such a tricky one. I think we have times when the joy
is
gone but we're still supposed to
stick it out. Other times joy going is a huge red warning flag.”

“No formula on this,” Mike said.

“Yeah,” I said. “No formula. Guess that's what we’re
supposed to need wisdom for.”

“The other tidbit of wisdom that came to me last night ...”
Mike said.

“Yeah?”

“No need to make a decision about PNG until the end of May,”
Mike said.
“So how about that?
 
We enjoy hanging out in May, and then the
last week of May we make a decision. Okay?”

“Uh, I'm a little behind here,” I sent back after a brief
pause. “So you really
are
thinking
seriously about not staying until December?”

This time Mike used the party emoticon.

“Yeah,” he said.

“I didn't think it was in the
serious
zone yet,” I said. “I thought it was in the
thinking
zone. Huh. Good to know.”

“Thinking-to-serious can happen quite quickly for me,” Mike
wrote.

Malibu,
USA

I thought that our not talking about Mike leaving PNG until
the end of May was wise. It meant we could have a relaxed month.
A month that as much as possible simulated a normal relationship.
A month full of talking and all those aspects of dating that are pretty hard to
replicate over Skype, no matter how creative you are with emoticons.
A month to see whether we really
were
as good together face-to-face as we were over distance.
I was really looking forward to sharing candlelight dinners, movies, picnic
blankets, strawberries, glasses of wine, touch. And a week after Mike arrived
in L.A., that’s exactly what we were doing.

No, not touching.
A picnic blanket, a
grassy quiet hill, my favorite white wine, macadamia nuts, cheese and crackers,
sunset, and the Pacific Ocean.

“Ah, Australia,” we said, looking out to sea as we toasted
the Pacific.

“It’s just over there,” I said fondly, pointing.

“Well,” Mike said diplomatically, “you
could
get to Australia that way … if you wanted to go through
Ecuador first.”

He handed me a strawberry.

“So,” he teased. “We have this whole list of topics to talk
about that we haven’t tackled over Skype. What weighty topic do you want to
discuss tonight?”

Tired after the emotional intensity of our first week
together and all the talking we’d already done, I took the easy way out.

“You pick,” I said, smiling magnanimously.

“I don’t want to talk about anything on the list tonight,”
Mike said

“Oh, okay,” I said, thinking that Mike must
finally
have had his fill of intensity
and was after light and fluffy banter. “Pick something else then, any topic.”

“Any topic?
Any
topic it all?
Do you realize the power you’ve given me?”

“Use it wisely,” I said, lazily wondering where he was going
to go with it.

* * *

Which was when he got on his knees in
front of me and said, “Lisa Marie McKay, will you marry me?
”

* * *

Before total shock set in three seconds later I thought,
“WHAT???? Lisa, focus! You’ve just been asked a yes-or-no question. The answer
is absolutely, categorically not no. So, uh, it must be… yes?”

So that is what I said. Or probably more accurately, that is
what I squeaked.

* * *

The rest of the evening is a bit jumbled in my mind, less a
blur than a slide show. I remember certain things very clearly and others not
at all.

Right after I said yes, Mike pulled out not one engagement
ring but eight.

“You would not
believe
how hard it is to research diamonds over a dial-up internet connection,” Mike
said, waving a long string of woven cane rings around and talking very fast.
“I’ve been trying to figure this out for
weeks
.
I was completely sure I needed to have a ring until my colleague Sue told me,
‘Question first, ring later.’ So I figured a cane ring would be a good start.
Plus, this way you can just pick the one that fits.”

“Okay,” I said, sliding one cane ring after another onto my
finger.

“That one,” I said, pointing to a small one near the end of
the chain.

Mike cut it free from its neighbors with his pocketknife and
slid it onto my finger.

“So, where do you want to get married?” Mike asked.

I looked at him blankly. Who was Sue? Where did I want to
get married? What had just happened?

“Weeks?”
I said. “You’ve been
thinking about this for
weeks
? Let’s
start at the beginning.”

“Okay,” he said, “but we’ve got to meet your parents at the
restaurant at seven.”

“My parents know?”

“I emailed them ten days ago,” Mike said.

* * *

The beachside Malibu restaurant we went to that night was
gorgeous and the food was incredible. I took the fact that I was actually able
to eat as a good sign (although worryingly, and completely out of character for
me, I wasn’t able to finish dessert).

As Mike and my parents filled me in on the back story, I
became progressively more overwhelmed.
Mike’s weeks of
planning and data-gathering about rings and proposal venues.
How he had
emailed my parents from PNG telling them what he was planning and asking if
they could spend the day together after Mum and Dad arrived in L.A. five days
after he did. How the three of them had talked all morning on Friday while I
was at work getting mock-kidnapped by drunken militia during a security
training exercise.

“I wanted to organize it so your parents would be the first
people we’d see after the proposal,” Mike said. “So it worked out perfectly
that they were here in L.A. this weekend on their way to Washington.”

 
“What did you talk
about on Friday?” I asked.

“I asked for their blessing and their concerns,” Mike said.
“It was all very natural, comfortable. It was great.”

“We asked whether you were expecting this,” Mum said.

“I asked whether he thought you’d say yes,” Dad said.

That counted as “comfortable” and “great”? I sneaked a look
at Mike. He seemed unfazed.

“I said absolutely,” Mike said.
“On both
counts.”

“I said I wasn’t so sure,” Dad said.

Then, it seemed, they had started to talk odds.

“I thought there was a 95 percent chance of yes,” Mike said,
“a 4 percent chance of ‘wait,’ and less than 1 percent chance of no.”

“I said I wasn’t so sure,” Dad said.

I didn’t ask Dad what his guesses had been.

I also didn’t say that I’d totally forgotten that “wait” might
be a viable answer.

“The way I saw it,” Mike said, “‘yes’ or ‘wait’ were both
wins anyway. I just wanted you to know exactly where I stand and that I want to
commit to spending the rest of my life with you. So it was win-win, really.”
Not for the first time, I admired Mike’s capacity for dauntless optimism. “Then
your parents spent the rest of the morning telling me that my plan to surprise
you at sunset over a glass of wine in Malibu wasn’t credible enough and we
needed to tweak it to come up with something that was absolutely airtight. I
really didn’t want you to figure it out and ruin the story, because I know you
need stories.”

I bit my lip.

“Mike,” I said. “You just proposed to me after we’ve spent
three weeks, total, in the same country. I don’t think story was ever going to
be our biggest problem.”

Los
Angeles, USA

After dinner, after we’d driven back to L.A., and after we’d
dropped my parents off at their motel, Mike and I talked until almost 2 a.m.

It was then that a somewhat sobered Mike began to realize
how far off our respective timelines had been.

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about your leaving the
field until the end of the month,” I said to him.

“Yeah,” Mike said, looking puzzled. “I wanted you to have
the security of knowing my intentions before we talked about that. Me leaving
PNG and moving to L.A. has a big impact on your life.”

“Not as big as us getting
married!
” I said. “I would have been fine with you moving to L.A.
without us being engaged.”

“Huh,” Mike said. “I guess I misjudged that one. I half feel
like I should apologize, but I’m not sure what for, because
I’m happy
we’re engaged.”