Some Sentimentalness

I had been carrying this ring around in my pocket for months before I asked Laura to marry me. I just could never find the right time or the right place. I was completely sure that I wanted to marry her, I knew that after our first date when I immediately came home and wrote it in my journal. I just could not find the right time. I was nervous, not because I thought she would say no, we had been talking about it for months, it was more a matter of when and how. My hands were sweating like any cliche in any random love movie, we went to Olive Garden and I got the idea that this was the time, this was it I could not keep putting it off, it was annoying to carry around this ring in your pocket with no real plan to unload it. So I gave it to the waiter and asked him to put it in the bread and when he brought it out the entire wait staff were standing around, waiting for her answer. She opened the bread and saw it and I asked, politely, not all caveman like to marry me. After she said yes, the place erupted like Joe Louis Arena after an Yzerman goal. Inside I felt the same way, I was relieved, happy, excited and I felt like this was such a right and undeserved gift from God. 8 years later I still feel the same way. There is warmth in the love of a family, my wife, my kids, in-laws. I am apparently the only person I know that gets along with my in-laws, I guess that is because my family growing up were always my mother and my brother, that's it. All of the sudden I have 2 more brothers, a couple sister in-laws, 2 grandmas, a mother and father in-law, and a bunch of cousins. It was weird and still feels weird, but when I sit with all of them at holidays and whenever I can see why family is not overrated at all, family is everything.