Well shoot, we got engaged!

We got engaged! James Brown, love-of-my-life, asked me to marry him and I said yes.

In addition to being honest through-and-through, he is a master plotter & planner. On Saturday he went to my parents' house not to ask their permission (none of us consider me chattel), but to let them know his intentions. We'd already had a lot of discussions about trying to have a baby, so the groundwork for being bound throughout this life had already been laid.

We'd talked some about marriage, but neither of us was banging a drum for it, both of us for our own reasons.

Mine was like this: a relationship offers moment-by-moment choices for love and engagement. Whether we're married or not, those choices are what stack up over time and create the quality of the relationship.  So I thought, why get married if the proof is in the pudding regardless of a ceremony?

I also had some fear of our relationship dissolving at some point, for no particular reason other than statistics and that people change.  I thought, "what's the point of getting married if you can just get divorced?"

But those viewpoints don't hold water for me anymore. I have a great therapist who probed a bit around these topics, and helped me realize that I had a band around my heart that was keeping me from fully embracing James' love for me. Not to mention he's the most loyal, steadfast, persistently loving man I could dream up. I can't imagine getting married to anyone else (that's good, lol).

But really - he's got this steadfastness that, once I acknowledged my own fears about being loved and worthy of a love as deep as his, leaves me with no doubt in our ability to hang out and love each other until one of us kicks it. HOW COOL IS THAT?!

So here's the love story - the fun part:

Like I mentioned, James had gone to my folks' house on Saturday to let them know he was planning to marry me. Since he has an honest streak a mile wide and a distaste for secrecy, he even let me know about that ahead of time.

Still, I was blissfully ignorant of the whole proposal thing up until the moment it happened. An engineer who recently designed and oversaw the building of a probiotics plant, James is and efficient and thorough planner. 

James had mentioned to me that our friend Chase, a jazz drummer who plays out a lot, would be performing in Ellison Park on Tuesday night. He suggested we do date night on Tuesday rather than Wednesday. I was down. Also, I’m with a guy who suggested a weekly, wid-week date night. That’s the kind of person I want to marry, FYI.

He’d told my folks about the music plan but wanted to throw me off the scent. So what did he do? He encouraged my mom to reach out to me. That’s our typical routine for planning. So while at the barn on Tuesday afternoon, my mom and I have this text interaction:

Mom: “Leo [my dad] told me there might be music in Ellison Park tonight ( via convo with James I guess).  Not heading to Buffalo til tomorrow and dad thought it might be nice to head out for some cultural enlightenment.   If we decide to come do you have any details?”

Me: “Yes I would call James about it he knows details.”

Mom: “Will do.  Maybe see you later.  💕”

See what they did there? Brilliant. So I got home and James told me he’d made a reservation for the two of us at Lucky’s, where we’d not been before. Not typical of him to make a reservation for date night (what place is booked up at 5:30 on a Tuesday?) but I didn’t question it. We had a tasty snack and a cocktail apiece, and I drove us to Ellison Park.

We walked through the meadowy, southeast end of the park, to the wooden bridge near the ancient willows. This is where Irondequoit Creek separates the meadowy area from the pines.

As we approached the bridge, I saw my folks with their dog, Gruggy. (I call him Gruggy because he’s been sad-looking since he was a baby. His given name is Finn.) I snuggled Gruggy and hugged my parents, noticing that our friend Chase had his snare drum set up with a string quartet just next to the creek. I thought, We must be early and they’re still warming up, since nobody else was there.

We crossed the bridge and made ourselves comfortable by the creek. Pretty soon, the ensemble started playing danceable music and our friends Barb and Peter, who were in from out of town and staying with us, and Chad arrived. My parents, Barb and Peter, and James and I started dancing to the music. It was cute - romantical covers of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran songs, etc. It felt bizarre and fun and dreamlike. Those are qualities I embrace and encounter pretty often in my life, so I didn’t question it. Somehow, I still had no idea where this was going.

We took a break from dancing to sit, and James told my dad, “Leo, on our first date, this bench is where Adair told me that she was a lizard in a suit and she’d be leaving indefinitely for Prague.” True.

Shortly after I asked James on that first date in 2018, I did head out for Prague. I already had a one-way ticket purchased. James and I had encountered each other for several months at The Red Fern, where I was a server and he was a regular. After months of minimal engagement (and a bit of curiosity about him on my part), we finally had a conversation while I was having my shift meal post-work. It left me extremely interested in him. But alas! I was navigating the deep trenches of healing post-heartbreak, and wasn’t ready for a relationship.

But then I ended up with that one-way ticket to Prague, and I thought, “I’m really interested in getting to know him better. And I know I’m headed out so if I just let him know right away that I only have a month and a half, I’ll be safe to get to know him if he wants to engage, and I will be able to avoid the temptation of being in a relationship before I’m ready!”

Nice try. What happened was this: he was interested in continuing to hang out, and far from ending things once I left, we fell more thoroughly and deeply in love over video chat as my summer abroad progressed. He even visited me while I was there. THAT was magic.

While in Prague, I was singing at a lot of open mics with my friend Zack, who’s a great guitar player. One of the songs we liked doing was Blue Moon. I sent James a recording of me singing Blue Moon that summer, and he still listens to it. You might say that it's s our song.

So the ensemble starts playing Blue Moon, and of course we get up to dance. I am tickled pink that they’re playing this special song, and still I am in the dark about what’s coming next.

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But of course, halfway through the song, James got down on one knee and pulled a ring out of a baggie (always practical, he realized that a box would be bulky and obvious in his pocket). Eyes shining, he said, “Adair Finucane, I love you more than anything in the world. Will you share your life with me?” And of course I wept and said yes. 

My dad pulled out a bottle of champagne. We all toasted, and James and I did some spontaneous interpretive dancing.

The ring (created by my talented friend Marisa of Interstellar Lovecraft, and bezel designed by James) ended up being a little too small and it flew off into the grass. We had a find-the-ring adventure. Chad and Barb, whose camera skills are incredible, got some wonderful shots of it all.

We went home, and in the backyard, our neighbors Tish and Dave toasted us with bubbly, which they happened to have chilled (not planned) in Tish’s mother’s gilded champagne flutes. Our friends joined us later and we had a little fire.

Just after he proposed, I was feeling jubilant, and also flabbergasted and overwhelmed with the thoughtfulness and love that James had put into this.

He held me close and said “You are so deserving.” He doesn’t do it all the time, but once in a while that man simply cracks me open. And it’s true - I really felt my heart crack open in that moment, and I let his love in.

I told him the next day about my crucial reason for feeling so damn confident in our love. It’s because, after over three years of being together, and more than two of living together, I continue to love myself more each day. Every day, he gently holds space for me to love myself by being there for me, and modeling his own self-love, which is deep. 

I cannot imagine marrying anyone else in the world, and I’m so glad I don’t have to. I can also hardly believe that I’m at this point of my own evolution - that I’m really truly ready to say, Let’s have thousands of dinners, go through hell and back when necessary, raise children, play, laugh, and love the bejeezus out of each other ‘till death do us part. 

Really though, I’ve known since that summer in Prague that my soul has known him for a long, long time. And it’s just such a joy to be together in space and time.

Thanks for reading this love story! Cheers to your self-love and mine. Love you!