Now it can be told!

All week I've been trying to avoid communicating with my daughter, not because of anything she did but because of something I'm afraid I might do--namely, spill the beans. Since last weekend I've been living in fear that in response to some simple question like "So how's life?" I might blurt out something like, "Oh, fine, I guess, nothing much going on, no excitement whatsoever, certainly no surprise visit from your sweetheart--Ha ha! What a silly idea!--and even if he had visited, he certainly wouldn't have mentioned anything about a top-secret plan to surprise you with a diamond ring and a Really Big Question, so really, life is just one long stretch of dullness now that you're gone!"

So all week I've been biting my tongue and biding my time until the top secret plan should come to fruition, which occurred last night and which our daughter told us all about when she called early this morning to announce that she and her sweetheart are engaged.

I tried to act surprised, but I needn't have bothered: he had already told her about his surprise visit to our house last weekend, where he laid out his plans with the precision of an engineer.

I didn't have to pretend to be delighted because I am. If someone had asked me to design the perfect mate for my adorable daughter, I could not have come up with a model any better than her boyfriend--and I probably would have done much worse because it would not have occurred to me to include in the specifications the ability to play the accordion. He has passed all his important relationship tests with flying colors: the family test, the extended family test, the long-distance relationship test, and the long road trip test, any one of them sufficient to reveal any inherent unsuitability in a potential spouse. I don't intend to go all Jane Austen on him and ask him to reveal his annual income, but hey, he's an engineer! You can't go wrong with a guy who knows how to make computers obey his every command.

So now the secret's out of the bag and the ring is on the finger and the family is getting bigger, and now, after a week of biting my tongue, I can finally relax and let it all hang out: my daughter's engaged, and I couldn't be happier.