Proposal

Sundays turned out to be some of the most lucrative days to work at the restaurant. It was slower so there were only two busboys and you got to bus more tables. The restaurant would open later so I could go to church, then go in.

The funny thing about Sundays is that all these East Indian families would come to the restaurant. There are a lot of Indian small business owners in London. They are very hard-working but I guess Sunday evenings were their downtime. However, it was funny to us that they would come to our restaurant. Chicago-style pizza and American fare in general didn’t seem like the type of food they would be interested in. 

The Indian families also had a plethora of children with whom they seemed very hands off. The kids would wander about the restaurant when they were finished eating, getting in the way and being a general nuisance. 

There were two doors from the restaurant to the kitchen, one going in and one coming out. The doors had kick plates at the bottom so you could kick the doors open when your hands were full. You had to develop a good, hard kick to get them to really swing open. 

The door coming back into the restaurant had small railings on both sides to keep people from getting in front of the door and getting nailed. The Indian kids, however, would start playing and swinging on the railings and inevitably, I nailed a few. Of course, it was never on purpose.

I saved up enough money to buy an engagement ring. One of the pastors of The New Rainbow had a brother up in Birmingham who was a jeweler. I went up there to discuss the design and he made both the engagement ring and wedding band for me. Then I had to figure out when I was actually going to present it to Laura. She was still on the ship but going home for Christmas. I decided to try surprise her with a visit. 

I asked if I could get the time off at work and they said no. I told them that I would just quit then. I must have been somewhat useful because they found a way to work it out. I bought a ticket and called Laura’s mom to tell her my plan.

Laura suspected I might be coming because, unbeknownst to me, she had called her mom just the day before, asking her if I had plans to be there for Christmas. There had been a bombing on a flight out of London to New York that day that had killed all aboard and she was worried that I may have been on the plane.

Laura’s mom asked Laura how she thought she would know if I was coming. Laura said that if I was, I would call her to let her know. She was right but I called her the next day. My flight was direct from London to San Francisco which was ten hours. I put my aforementioned plane-sleeping skills to good use.

Laura got home early Christmas Eve. She was still hoping I was going to surprise her. All day long she was expecting me to show up at any moment. It was distracting her from really enjoying being with her family. Finally, she decided to just try putting it out of her mind so that she wouldn’t pine her time away. She went out to dinner with her sister’s family and I arrived at the airport while she was there. 

Laura’s dad picked me up but I forgot to ask him for permission to marry his daughter. However, I wanted to get a rose for my proposal but didn’t have any US dollars yet. Her dad loaned me the money so I figured he had probably been okay with the proposal. We went back to their house to await Laura’s arrival. 

When she pulled up, I ran back to her room. Her dad told her he wanted to show her his Christmas present for her mom back in her room. Everyone followed as she opened the door, saw me, screamed and ran back out. The others that had followed were still in the room.

When Laura realized what she had done, she came back into the room, kicked everyone else out and shut the door. Then I made another proposal mistake. Instead of getting on my knee, I just sat next to her on the bed and read her a poem I had written. Back in Jamaica when we knew we were going to get married, I had written Laura another poem. I had ended it with, “I want to be with you the rest of my life, so come on Laura, be my…” This time I added, “wife”. She said yes.

May is Laura’s favorite month and 7 is her favorite number. Unfortunately, in 1989, May 7th fell on a Sunday so we set the wedding for May 6th. One of her little friends that she used to teach in the preschool told her that May 7th would still be special because it would be the first whole day that she would be married to Mr. Stephen. May 7th was also the little girl’s birthday. It was a nice Christmas and we made plans for our next visit together.

Christmastime 1988



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