Thursday, February 15, 2007

Book of Myself - Middle Years - Family - The story about how I became engaged is:

In 1983, Kate and I were living in Mexico City working for Chase Manhattan Bank. We were twenty-somethings out to save the world and were madly in love. We had known each other for about eighteen months and had been living together for almost a year. We went to San Francisco to meet my brother and sisters. Several months earlier we had visited my mom and stepfather in Lima, Peru where I had purchased the engagement ring without Kate knowing. In San Francisco, we stayed in a funky Victorian hotel in the Haight Ashbury district. On the second day in the city I took Kate out for a hike at Lands End, which is a fantastic place at the northwestern end of the San Francisco peninsula to view the Golden Gate Bridge and the bay. I was so excited I was ready to burst. We hiked all the way down the rocks by the water on some pretty dangerous trials surrounded by poison oak. At the bottom, we had a picnic on the rocks with a gorgeous sunny view of the majestic bridge. I asked Kate if she wanted to make it permanent and gave her the Peruvian diamond ring. She said I had to get on one knee and do it right, so I got down and asked her to marry me, and she said yes. That was the happiest day in my life up to that point. There have been thousands of happy moments together since then, but that one sticks in my mind like it was yesterday.