The Three Vs of True Love: Valium, Validation, and Valentine's Day

Your mother is so nervous,” my dad said, “she popped a pair of Valium.”

“David, shut your big mouth!” my mom said.

This exchange happened in the parking lot of the restaurant where I would be proposing to my wife. It was as if my parents were embodying Frank and Estelle Costanza.  

“All of her work friends said to talk you out of it,” my dad said.  

I imagined what my poor, sweet mom went through up to this moment, the gaggle of divorcées and unhappy spouses of her office dumping their hot takes on her nervous head:

• “Public proposals are a lot of pressure. Pressure makes diamonds, not fiancées.

• “Put a young woman in hard spot and she will emotionally annihilate and psychologically castrate your boy.”

• “Does he have a therapist? Do you?”

• “My god, he’s a sensitive creative! If she says no, he’ll get all woe-is-me and cut off his ear. Just like that Thomas Kinkade.”

• “When the marriage is annulled, he’ll end up living on your couch, eating Cheez-its by the fistful and watching reruns of Love Connection.”

• “Tell him to grow up. Romance is for suckers.”

• “If he gets rejected, he’ll almost certainly get erectile dysfunction and never recover. And he’ll blame his mother. They always do.”

To my mom’s credit, she didn’t try to talk me out of it. In fact, nobody did. Weeks earlier, I had asked Charlie, her dad, to meet me. I told him I had some questions about a fan, and he was a major player in the ventilation industry. That was my smooth smoke-and-mirrors cover story—a ventilation query. 

We met at a McDonald’s—the smoothness continued—and he sat opposite me. 

“So,” he said. “You have questions about a fan?” 

“No,” I said. 

“Oh, I thought you wanted to talk fans.” 

“Actually, I wanted to ask for your permission to marry Becky.” Note: In the comedy game, that’s what we call a non-sequitur. 

He nodded quietly for a moment, processing the emotional grenade I just lobbed at him. To this day, I marvel at his composure, at his patience. I imagine a young man meeting me for a Filet-O-Fish, asking permission to marry my daughter, and revealing that his future plans involve a run at the oh-so-practical vocation of screenwriting for independent and art house films. Some combination of hysterics and Three Stooges-esque violence would likely ensue. 

But not with Charlie. He asked a bunch of questions that were less a series of indictments and more a series of encouragements. His last question: “Did you get a ring yet?” 

“Not yet. I was gonna head over to the jeweler depending on how this conversation went.” 

“Can I come?” he asked.

I know what you’re thinking, but not only did he help me pick out the ring, he paid for it. I intended to finance it through the jeweler, but he whipped out his credit card, insisting he needed the airline miles, and said I could pay him back when I had the money. 

Over the next few months (maybe longer, I forget) I palmed him a hundred here, a couple hundred there—it was like something out of a Scorcese movie, but he never put my head in a vice or stabbed me to death with his mom’s kitchen knife. 

I decided to propose on Valentine’s Day. As a 20-something aspiring independent filmmaker, I was a self-righteous douche about cliches, thumbing my nose at them from the perch of my faux intellectual snobbery. (Honestly, I’m still something of a self-righteous faux-intellectual douche—stories for another time.) Never would Becky think I’d propose on Valentine’s Day, which made it the ideal move.

I can trace so many wonderful things about my life based on the decision to propose to my wife. It’s difficult to make sense of it. Genetically, the odds of my getting married and staying happily married? Hell, not one bookie in Clark County would have taken that bet.

The decision to propose happened quickly. Really, it came when I entertained the idea of what a proposal would look like. All the pieces of the story fell into place pretty easily, so easily that it seemed as if it was already written.

The only part that didn’t seem written was my mom showing up on muscle relaxers. Normally, that wouldn’t have been an issue—and to be totally clear, my mom doesn’t regularly pound muscle relaxers—but I had told her about this proposal, asked her to play a pivotal role in its execution, and she had suffered the indignities of her co-workers. The nerves were having their way with her.

We all met at a Cuban restaurant called Habana where Becky and I had our first date. We were treating our parents to a Valentine’s Day dinner, or so Becky thought. At the beginning of dinner, I told Becky I had a present for her. It was a necklace from Tiffany’s. My mom removed the necklace from its robin's-egg blue box and started to fasten it around my wife’s neck.

In a standup special, Robin Williams said, “Michael Jackson was taking propofol to sleep, which is like doing chemotherapy because you're tired of shaving your head.” Well, my mom had taken two muscle relaxers, and watching her fasten this necklace made me confident that Alfred Hitchcock had been awarded a special angel status in the afterlife which allowed him to direct certain scenes here on earth.

Compounding my mom’s nerves was this: the engagement ring was already fastened to the clasp of the necklace.

The bit was this: over dinner I was going to tell a story about a failed magician who finally achieved his masterpiece, a whimsical turn of enchantment that blended the intangible qualities of our families and yadda yadda yadda at the end I would say that the real magic trick was that I was asking her to marry me. She would look confused and then I would reach for the back of her neck where I would slip the ring along the chain and reveal the diamond on its tulip setting, and we would live happily ever after.

As long as my mom managed to do her part…

And she did.

It took her a while. Her fingers moved as if she was defusing a bomb. But eventually she got it. And then she sat down and drank a glass of wine like it was Gatorade and she had just run a 10k.

I got to the proposal and Becky accepted. Of all the questions I’ve ever asked, that one’s still the best. My mom returned to her office and told all of her co-workers to suck it. That may or may not be true, but I hope it is.

The thing that sticks with me about our engagement is that the idea of it came together so quickly. The proposal, yes, but also the marriage. I could see it vividly laid out in my imagination. Not that it would all be easy—it never is for anyone, and it shouldn’t be—but that it would be right, that it would be worth it, that it would be fun. So much fun.

In April, we’ll have been married for twenty years, and we plan to renew our vows with our hearts set on twenty more. I doubt my mom will need the Valium this time.

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