The engagement

It is the morning of Christmas Day, 25th December 2014, and I am lying in bed in Mathias arms thinking I might want to stay in bed all day. My body at least is telling me this after the Christmas feast we had last night. Mathias had cooked a heavenly tasting Christmas chicken with fresh red cabbage and I definitely ate too much. I am still full and actually also have a bit of a stomach pain. Maybe I shouldn’t have put so much of the chicken grease on the cabbage, but it was just soo delicious. It is definitely too early to get up and I fall back asleep. Next thing I know is I am alone in bed and can hear Mathias in the kitchen and can smell the freshly brewed coffee. As if he can hear my thoughts, he suddenly stands in the door with a big smile and a ‚Merry Christmas‘ on his lips. I just love how full of energy he always is in the morning and I especially love that despite it he still lets me wake up slowly every day, bringing me my coffee and waiting patiently until my system has started up. 😉

Feeling the sunshine through the window on my skin, I get up, realizing it is a beautiful day outside, that we have a skype date with Austria for 9:00 am and that I promised Mathias to bake a fresh bread for our picnic later that day. While I do all that though, I can feel my stomach still complaining or rather, I think it is my liver complaining. So once the bread is in the oven I lay down again not feeling too well. Mathias asks me several times when I am ready to go for our walk and picnic, but I cannot motivate myself to get up yet. I think in the end it is almost 2 o’clock in the afternoon, when he finally convinces me that going for a walk might help. And at the thought of a picnic in the sun with a view over the lakes, my energy seems to come back.

Mathias has already prepared everything for the picnic and so we leave the house quite quickly in the end. We walk towards the lake and then into the forest that runs around the lake. We got told that there is a beautiful lookout about a 2 hours walk away that however is not that easy to find, as the trail is not marked and there are many crossroads. Thinking it cannot be that difficult if we just stay close to the lake all the time, we head into our adventure.

I already feel much better from walking and we get first beautiful views over San Martin and its lake. We continue on and of course get lost at some point! I am not really surprised though, as we often think there is a trail when there isn’t one or that a trail that looks like the main trails turns out to be a dead end after some time. So after about I think 1 1/2 hours we find ourselves at a dead end without a major view. Above us seems to be a trail though, so we start climbing a bit and yes end up on a trail again. After about 20 minutes we reach a dead end again ;).

This time the view is stunning though and Mathias wants to stay here for the picnic. I cannot see any proper space to sit down, but a few minutes later I see Mathias above me with a big smile saying he found a place. Well, I would more call it a big rock, but it is good enough as I am actually feeling hungry again. A good sign! Perfectly prepared, Mathias takes out a blanket for us to sit on. While I sit on the left, already taking pictures of the amazing view, Mathias carefully prepares the picnic board. So when he finally turns around, holding the board full of food into the sunlight smiling at me, I do not realize at first what is going on.

I just keep on taking pictures and tell him ‚hold it a bit more to the left or to the right‘, so I can get the best sunlight on it for the picture. When I finally put the camera down and look at the board with fresh bread and our dinner left-overs, I see an oyster shell on the board. First I am thinking, that is strange, I didn’t see any oysters in the supermarket yesterday. But than I can hear Mathias say: ‚Schatz, I want to ask you something‘ and me saying ‚Oh my god!‘. The coin has dropped. He is asking me. And as I look at him and here the question leave his lips, I am speechless and cannot say a word because I am trying to hold my tears back. When he looks at me not saying anything anymore, I realize I have to answer.

So I let the tears come and say ‚yes of course I do!‘. And in my head I am thinking, it is all I ever wanted from the moment I first put my nose on your neck on the dance floor and your scent wrapped me into happiness like a drug. And so we are both drunk with happiness, enjoying the moment and the stunning view. I hear myself asking him a question now and then, how he managed to get the ring and when and where the shell is from, but mostly I am just happy and smiling inside. He wants to keep it all a secret anyway, just tells me that he collected the shell on the beach when we were in South Africa.

When I look at the ring I am amazed. Not only about how he managed to get it, because we spent almost every second together and I am counting every cent we spent, but mostly that he found the perfect ring for me. I never wanted a ring that is too big or has a big stone. And whenever we walked past a jewellery store and he did ask me once in a while which ring I liked, I never saw any that I did. Just always rings that were too big for me and even the ones with a little stone on the top where just too high for my taste or the stone socket around it made it look big again. So finding a thin silver ring with my favourite coloured stone, a turquoise gemstone, delicately worked into it impresses me beyond words. I don’t know how he does it, but I am incredibly grateful that he somehow knows what jewellery I like and what suits me. Makes me look forward to all the birthdays and Christmases to come ;).

When we finally walk back down, we stop at the first crossroad and Mathias carves our initials into a tree at the corner. This way, we will hopefully find our way back to our special own lookout, when we return to this place one day. What a special day with a very special man. So looking forward to every single day together yet to come!