10/10/10

A few weeks ago Daniel said, “You want to go to the pumpkin patch and get a pumpkin this year?” 

That was a strange suggestion from him, but I DID want to go to the pumpkin patch and get a pumpkin, so I decided to roll with it. On Thursday or Friday Daniel said, “Are we still on for the pumpkin patch? You want to do it Sunday after lunch?” I said, “sure.”

After lunch we headed just down the street to Gnismer Farms to pick my pumpkin. As soon as we pulled in I could see there was a problem. The pumpkin field was barren, desolate, plowed under, not a darn pumpkin in sight.

“What!? No Pumpkins!?"

This was a serious let down because for real, I wanted a pumpkin. Daniel said, “Well, let's go talk to the farmer and see if he has another field.”

The farmer said, “Oh yeah, sorry- all the pumpkins are gone. We had caterpillar problems this year, and what we did get in were all bought up the first weekend we opened.”

Blasted  caterpillars . . . 

Then Farmer Gnismer helpfully suggested we explore the corn field maze. I grumbled about it for a while. “I don’t know, maybe we should just go find another pumpkin field . . ."   

Daniel said, “Well, let’s try it, since we are here.” 

I said, “Fine.”

The farmer's wife was very encouraging about the corn field maze. 

She said, “Oh yeah, it will be fun, you’ll love it! We’ve hidden clues all over the field, you need to find all of them, then when you come out we’ll give you a quiz.”

So- in we went to the corn maze, the maize maze. The corn stalks were tall, but there wasn’t any actual corn on them. We started walking and finding clues- and if I have to take a quiz, I’m writing the answers down, so I got out my pen and my note pad and started my list: “Corn, sorgum, green chilli, Illinois, night shade, grass, curcubic, green” when we got to “Ichabod Crane” I saw we were near the exit and I said, “We can’t go out yet! I don’t have all the clues!” 

Daniel said, “OK! But at least get these clues and we’ll turn around and go back in.” 

So I went to the next “clue” which was on a bigger tag than the rest of the clues and read, “Shannon"  I thought that was funny, but I got out my pen anyway, then I read the rest of the sentence, “Will you marry me. – Daniel” By the time I’d figured that out Daniel had moved in front of me and had knelt  down with the ring box. 

He asked some question and I said “YES!” He asked another question, I said, “YES!” to that one too.

I only vaguely remember that the questions were something like, “Will you be my pumpkin for ever?” and “Will you marry me?” Whatever- I already had the question in writing in my hand- YES! (He had planned on being in a pumpkin patch and asking me to be his 'corn on the cob for ever' doesn't have the same ring to it, so he stuck to the pumpkin plan- of course I had no idea at the time.)

When I looked up there was the farmer with his camera and all the people who had gone through the maze ahead of us. They had seen the sign and were hanging around to see what would happen next.

Someone asked if I cried; I didn’t because- a proposal in a corn field was a bit surreal . . . on the way in I was thinking about Children of the Corn, and that scene in X-files where they are running through the corn fields .. . . not about rings and proposals.

The farmer was super excited and after he had taken the pictures he cut off my “clue” and gave it to me. Then he cut off the top of a corn stalk and gave it to me as a memento- he also asked if I wanted a corn bouquet- but I declined.

Daniel had planned on writing his message on a pumpkin so that I could find it in the field. But when he went to the farm on Friday he found out about the caterpillars and the lack of pumpkins, so he and the farmer and the farmer’s wife made this plan . . . 

Daniel said he thought I was going to figure out what was going on because he had the ring box in his pocket and he thought I’d ask him about it (because I’m pretty curious) but I never noticed- I was concentrating on the pumpkins, and the corn clues. 

 The only strange thing I really noticed was that had tucked in his t-shirt and was wearing a belt to go to the pumpkin patch. Sort of formal for a pumpkin patch, I was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Zombie chick.”

I told him later that I should have known he was up to something because the date was 10/10/10 and he’s all about the numbers. He said he had originally planned to wait until Halloween, but he couldn’t pass up 10/10/10 as a once in a life time date.  Also apparently 101010 in binary code = 42.  42 is the answer to the question to of "Life, the universe, and everything."  42

My ring is custom designed and made. Daniel bought the opal 10 years ago thinking to use it as an engagement ring. It has 4 round white diamonds and 3 marquee blue diamonds. The third blue diamond is on the palm side of the band. There is a scrolled heart and our initials on each side of the back diamond. There are 8 stones all together because we met 8 years ago.