The first surprise was two tickets to Hawaii.
“Wha-a-at?” I exclaimed. I’m so frugal I couldn’t believe Tom would splurge on a trip this huge. But of course, I was excited.
We flew to Honolulu a few days after Christmas. The beautiful beaches, the lush countryside, seeing the legendary Don Ho in concert on New Year’s Eve—it was a wonderful vacation.
Then one morning Tom said he’d planned a surprise day. A van picked us up from the hotel, then went to other hotels to pick up other couples. As each boarded, Tom asked them not to mention where we were heading.
When we pulled up to a small hangar, I felt really confused. Then he broke the news: We were taking a helicopter ride over the island. I’m not afraid of flying, but our helicopter looked so flimsy! How could a few metal rods and a sheet of plastic take us over Diamond Head volcano?
But up we went, me jammed between Tom and the pilot. Huge earphones were clamped to our heads (so we could hear the pilot tell us we were going down?), just inches from that sheet of plastic, face to face with mortality.
As we sailed over Waikiki, Tom removed his earphones and screamed at me to do the same. Startled, I did. And then I saw that he was holding open a tiny black box, with a diamond ring inside.
“WILL YOU MARRY ME?!” he screamed.
After a few “OH MY GOD’s” I screamed back “YES!”
We looked at each other tearfully, and then I turned, grinning, at the pilot and pointed to my new ring.
He gave us the thumbs up and signaled to us to put our earphones back on. As we did, he pointed to the bay below.
“And to your left is Pearl Harbor.” Guess he’d seen a few mid-air proposals before!
We will be married seven years come June 19—Tom still makes my heart soar.
Read another proposal story!
