This week I will turn thirty-one. Thirty-one seems less important than thirty. Rather, it sounds less important. It isn’t, really; thirty only seems more important because we consider the beginning of a decade more of a milestone. We begin resolutions on the very first day of a week, but the second day doesn’t generally mean anything. It’s just the first day after starting something. It’s the day that you have to make something stick.

I’ve always imagined that my thirties would be the best decade of my life. That’s something you tell yourself, and in doing so, maybe you set yourself up for a little bit of disappointment. You muddle through the twenties, reminding yourself that in a few more years you’ll be older, you’ll be thirty, and that’s when the good stuff will really start happening. It’s something you tell yourself and you can’t believe could be wrong — the thirties will be the best because the twenties could have been a whole lot better in many respects.

Sometime next year I’m getting married. Longtime readers know I’ve done this before, and the results were fairly disastrous not only to my poor heart but to the tone of this site’s content. Longtime readers also know that there’s a cancelled engagement behind me, too. So count em: that’s two women that I gave commitments to, and two women who aren’t in my life anymore. It would be easy to say that the difference now is that I’m engaged to the woman I’m meant to be with, to the best woman a man could hope for.

So: I’m engaged to the best woman a man can hope for.

Her name is Felicia. It took me six months of Starbucks hot chocolates to find out that much about her. I was a little bit gun-shy since the last breakup; I’d put several reactive and very poor decisions behind me, and now I was trying to figure out who I was outside of the context of another person, and maybe this made me a little shy in general. So every day I would visit the little Starbucks near my job, and on the days that Felicia worked, I would visit twice, and she would smile at me, and she would take out a grande cup and scribble my order on it without asking, because she knew my order never changed. (I found out later that she thought of me as the grumpy hot chocolate guy. Grumpy, who knows why — I don’t deny the charge, but I can’t recall being particularly perturbed while in her store in those days.) One day as she made my drink and I stood by, waiting patiently, she wrote her initials in chocolate syrup on the whipped cream in my drink, and then told me that she’d just done that, and man, that smile. And that was maybe the first time that I thought: hmm. Because it’s not unusual for me to completely miss signals. Hit me over the head, hold up a sign. These things might work.

What finally lit the fuse was Top Gun. I’d been plotting a random event with some of the guys at my office — we all bought custom Top Gun t-shirts with the actors’ call signs on the back, and planned to serenade one of the girls, and then screen the movie at lunch. I wore the Goose t-shirt. That morning Felicia took my order, and I said something about it being Top Gun Day. She was intrigued, and popped her collar in honor of the big event.

At work the serenade went off almost without a hitch — Maverick flubbed the first line of the song — and then we spent lunch in a conference room, eating pizza and watching the movie. I took a break and darted to Starbucks. Felicia asked how it went, and I told her, and mentioned that we’d captured the whole thing on video. She wanted to see it, so she wrote her email address down for me. I wrote her back a little after that, and we wrote back and forth all afternoon. And yes, I asked her out. In an email. We went to dinner and a ballgame the next day, spent twelve hours talking and getting to know each other. I called it a date. She called it a ‘hangout’. We eventually straightened this out. It’s one of the few times I’ve been right, and she’s been so wrong.

I was pretty much gone for her right away. She’s adorable and small, has the most expressive face I’ve ever seen, and has amazing hands that spin rough fiber into gorgeous yarn, and gorgeous yarn into wonderful creations. She’s younger than me, but far more adult, and everything I thought I had figured out, she’s taught me more about. She eats octopus and folds origami. She loves creepy movies. She’ll eat an artichoke and then a Fruit Roll-up and then a bowl of macaroni — she has flexible taste buds. She’ll tear you up at Guitar Hero and Halo. Sometimes she snores, but damned if she doesn’t have cute snores. She can pout like nobody’s business, and bust you up laughing two seconds later. She sings, she bakes, she plays guitars and pianos and ukeleles, she cooks, she dances, she can kick your ass. And she’s hot. Goddamn, is she hot. I’ll just fess up to that one right now.

We broke up for a little while, for reasons I take full responsibility for. It’s easy to become boring when your job and all of your interests revolve around staying home, getting lazy, gaining weight, watching your social life decline. Over the two months that followed I spent a lot of time realizing just how much I missed her, and worked hard to win her back. I started taking stock of the things that hadn’t been working so well, and started attacking them. I must have done something right, because a few weeks ago Felicia accepted when I asked her to be my wife.

And oh, the plans we have. We’ve already begun turning the spare room into a craft room, where Felicia’s many spinning wheels and knitting projects will have room to sprawl about, free from the threatening claws of our two cats. Every weekend from here to 2012 is booked, it seems. We’re running together, starting new traditions together. She’s teaching me to love new foods, teaching me about wine. In the evenings while she spins yarn I camp out in the handmade rocking chair that she gave me for an engagement present, and I read wonderful books to her. We’re training our little dog to be a little grown-up dog, which maybe means we’re kind of grownups, too. We’re debating tropical destinations for the honeymoon. Tahiti? Belize? The Maldives? Anywhere warm and blue and a few thousand miles from here. Between her job and mine there is the potential for much stress, so we’ve both decided fuck that, we’re young and who needs that pressure anyway? Making the decision to be positive and happy actually seems to work. Felicia does not believe in luck, and I agree with her. Rather than a lucky man, I am a fortunate man. One who realizes with great clarity just how fortunate.

This week I will turn thirty-one. Thirty was my transition year — I got more wrong than right, and then started doubling back to fix those things. Which means that thirty-one will truly be the first of the best years of my life. But I don’t think I’ll limit myself to my thirties. With this woman at my side, I think I’ve got a whole lot more than that.

Not to end on too sappy a note, though — did I already say she’s really, really hot? Oh, right. I did. But some things are worth saying twice. In fact, some things are woth saying three times, because that third time is the one that really, really matters most.

Happy engagement, darling. I hope I am always the man you deserve.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009   

1. Liz wrote:
   September 22nd, 2009 at 9:15 pm

   This is the sweetest thing I’ve ever read (that you’ve written) about any girl in your life - and that’s because this is the right one. This is the one that will stick. This is the one that I adore like a sister - that I’ve been waiting for you to hurry up and marry ever since I first met her.

   You two are going to do amazing things together… I just wish I didn’t live so far away so I could be more of a part of it, too - or at least just see it more clearly. ;)

   I love you guys! You are definitely MFEO.

2. L Waterman wrote:
   September 23rd, 2009 at 5:49 am

   Yes Jason, you are a fortunate man and and a very grateful one to boot. Congratulations to you both.
   Have a wonderful birthday.

the blog and design portfolio of Jason Gurley. (Learn more.) This site has been around since 1998; me, since 1978. In 2005 I drove 3,000 miles to see a movie. 2009 is pretty aimless so far, but I'm sure I'll get around to something sooner or later.

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