The Clues of Engagement

Note: The actual clues are the ones in red italics underneath the numbered titles, which I've included to more easily keep track of them.

1.) The First Clue


It all started with some Edible Arrangement boxes delivered to my workplace. Tucked in with chocolate-covered strawberries and pineapples is a note:

I know no ways to mince it in love, but
directly to say "I love you:" then if you urge
me farther than to say "do you in faith?" I
wear out my suit. Give me your answer; i'
faith, do: and so clap hands and a bargain:
how say you, lady?


The note also explains that I will begin my quest for happiness on this day, and that the gate keeper is

“the boy that defeated a giant.”




2.) David

Tipped off by the quote by Shakespeare’s Henry V that it will lead to a proposal, I saw it coming but was unsure of where it would lead. I contacted the first person that occurred to me from the giant clue—my brother David, who sent me the next clue:

3.) The Phantom of the Opera

Great plays starts with a great overture. The object of your desire is full of mysteries that cannot be fully explained, and it shines like no others. Your first hint is located in an object that can be found in this video. Happy hunting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpmURNb449o

The video clip showed the opening scene from Phantom, one of our favorite plays, where the chandelier is put up for auction and transitions into the beginning of the story when the Paris Opera House was thriving. After watching the film starring Gerard Butler, we waited for a long time for the play to show in San Francisco, and on the night we went, a man had proposed to his girlfriend during intermission. I had mentioned that I thought it was pretty romantic, but my proposal story doesn’t stop here.

4.) The Chandelier

When I got home from work, I stood on one of the dining chairs to find my next clue in the chandelier of our formal dining room:

“Among her guests, Suyuan found the ‘best quality’ in her daughter.”



Right away, I recognize the line from The Joy Luck Club, one of my favorite books. Naturally, I thought it must be hidden in the chapter “Best Quality,” so I flipped through that book on my shelf but didn’t find anything. With some prompting, I realized the chapter described a scene where, during a family dinner, everyone gathered around the table to eat crab (naturally, a favorite of mine). Coming together for food represents unity and a time for bonding in so many cultures, and being family-oriented, both Tung and I are big on hosting and attending events like these. At my usual seat, I found, taped underneath the formal dining table, my next clue, coupled with a hex wrench.




5.) “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”

The road ahead will be treacherous.
Omnem dimittite spem, o vos intrantes

When Tung met me in college, I had a facetious license plate frame on my car: “Starlight, Starbright, Where the Hell is Mr. Right?” After we started dating and I was pretty sure I found my Mr. Right, I switched the message to “Abandon Hope all Ye Who Enter Here”—a quote from Dante Alighieri’s "Inferno" section of The Divine Comedy, inscribed on the threshold of the Gates of Hell. I bee-lined to the first Inferno that came to mind—Tung’s bathroom, trying the hex wrench on various objects screwed to the wall without finding an appropriate fit. I next tried the oven, thinking it might be a temperature reference, but didn’t find a clue there, either. Finally, with the “road” portion of the clue, I figured it would be car-related, so after using the hex wrench to pry open my back license plate frame, I found the next clue.

6.) A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

One of the first plays I took Tung to was a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Santa Clara University. Since then, he got forever sucked into the cheesy world of live performances and musicals. I recognized that line spoken by Puck right away, so within seconds, I found my next clue in my Pelican Shakespeare anthology at the beginning of the Midsummer play. A funny side-note is that Tung claimed to have spent hours looking through my various, very thick Norton anthologies to find the appropriate one in which to hide the clue. If you’ve ever owned or had to read from a Norton, you’d know the jokes about its sheer bulk, one of the favorites being that it is an English major’s murder weapon of choice (one clonk to the head, and you’re a goner).




7.) Room and Jewels

My next two-part clue led me to a specific room in the house, and then to an object in the room.

Locate me first:

Call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or any other name you please—it is not a matter of importance.

Then me:

I had brought so many beautiful gowns, so much jewelry, ornamented sandals, hairpins and diadems and headdresses.

I confess I do not know my Virginia Woolf and had no idea about the first clue. Turned out it was from “A Room of One’s Own,” which I had initially thought was the office in our house that we painted purple as a designated “writing room” for me, but it was actually the bedroom. The second quote was from The Memoirs of Cleopatra, alluding to her jewelry and ornaments, leading me to my jewelry box.

8.) Shoes

When there’s a shine on your shoes
There’s a melody in your heart
What a wonderful way to start the day.

One of the first things I put together by myself was a shoe rack for the house (astronomical talent, I know), and in one of the shoe boxes—conveniently the LAST one I managed to look in—was my next clue.




9.) “Good fences make good neighbors”

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall…

From the famous Robert Frost poem, I was led to the fence that we had rebuilt, sharing the cost with our backyard neighbors. The old fence had fallen down from a storm when we first moved in, and it was one of the many repair and renovation projects Tung and I went through as new homeowners.




10.) Kitchen and Cutlery

Two American ladies wish to retain a cook -- 27 rue to Fleurus.

Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes.
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, 'Hold, hold!'

Another two-part clue, the first from The Book of Salt by Monique Truong. Salt and cooks can be found in kitchens, and the second clue pointed me to my “keen knife,” a sharp-edged, Japanese iron blade used so often to prepare our dinners. Underneath the knife tray, I found…




11.) Wood

Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,
I cannot taint with fear.




During the first Christmas we celebrated in our new home, Tung and I dashed to a local Safeway on a particularly frosty night and bought Dura-Flame logs to burn in our wood fireplace. In the wood box, I found the ring box still in its Classic Rock plastic shopping bag, where the ring was purchased. Where the ring should have been was another clue:

12.) The Way of Harmony

When an opponent comes forward, move in and greet him;

if he wants to pull back, send him on his way.

Of course, what proposal would be complete without a reference to my choice martial art and how Tung and I met to begin with? In an aikido book by Morihiro Saito—my current teacher’s teacher—was the Henry V quote that started my journey, and which Tung read out loud to me:


I know no ways to mince it in love, but
directly to say "I love you:" then if you urge
me farther than to say "do you in faith?" I
wear out my suit. Give me your answer; i'
faith, do: and so clap hands and a bargain:
how say you, lady?



When I said yes to him, he gave me my last verbal clue to find my well-deserved ring: “Inconceivable!” Nestled in the inner cover of The Princess Bride DVD was my ring wrapped in a microfiber cloth. Tung finally slipped it on my finger, sealing “The point of no return.”

*****

How do I define love? It’s a boy with kickboxing bruises on his shins, whom I first met through training, who showed no false pretenses and practiced aikido with me in the way it should be practiced: with commitment and practicality, and with heart. It’s a young man who took me to a Valentine’s dance in college and later rode a ferris wheel with me to see a view of the world from up high, even though I later found out he does not like dancing or heights. It’s in the little gestures like reaching out to cradle my head as he took the off-ramp of a freeway exit, to keep my head from lolling in my sound slumber. It’s long car rides where the journey meant more than the destination as we talked over things that bothered us about work, family, or school. It’s buying things together that spoke of bigger commitments—a wiggly little puppy that has now grown into a nine-year-old dog, a car, a house. And it’s someone who has been right by your side through the major parts of your life, sharing the journey with you, knowing enough to take you on a nostalgic trip down memory lane with little strips of paper containing literary clues.




When someone loves you, he remembers what you love. I’ve always felt I have not been completely true to my creative-writing nature when I took up technical writing for a living, but these old English literature quotes resurfaced from my memory and heart with every new clue that I unearthed. He said I have given him “10 wonderful years.” What say I to his proposal? That he has also given me the most memorable 10, and so much more. That I can’t wait to embark on the next 10 with him and see where life will bring us. That I have been, always will be, ready for him. Ready and waiting.

For Tung, whom I always carry in my heart alongside this poem:

If I could, I would bottle you and me.
A dab behind the ears, and suddenly
I’d have sun in my smile, stars in my eyes,
Ocean in my laugh and wind in my sighs,
Summer in my soul! In my fantasy,
I’d distill our love with alchemy,
Capture each sweet moment in amber glass—
Your flicker, my flash, your hush, and my sass…
Then I’d inhale what I already knew—
The answer to the question of love? You.