I was leisurely browsing my way through blogs this evening… a lovely, relaxing pastime – especially when a pile of work sits at your side, waiting to be finished. But for tonight – work will wait. I ended up drawn to blogs of love stories – not fiction, grossly touchy feely and mushy, but real ones. Probably a lot like yours. Definitely a lot like mine. Perhaps the fact that yesterday was our anniversary has out me in this mood, I don’t know. But in it I am, so anyone reading this will get the dubious pleasure of taking a stroll back in time… To read our story… Installment #1.
I’m a transplant – a transplant that was re-transplanted. I’m a Canadian who was raised a southern girl and the south has a hold on me – it is what I think of when I think of home. There is nothing in the world like the Appalachians – in any season. However, the re-transplant occurred when I was 17. We moved north. To New York. I was a senior in high school and was pretty sure my parents couldn’t have come up with anything worse to do to me. From the hills of Tennessee to a city on Lake Ontario. From a place where it was assumed you were a Christian and a church that had everything going for it to a city in the most un-churched county in the country and a church whose total membership was the size of my old youth group.
A family in the new church had a cottage on the lake – and they invited the youth and young adults to go for a picnic. It may have been for the 4th of July, I don’t remember. I was bored, sitting around people watching – that’s what I do when I’m bored. There was a couple sitting on a bench, she was complaining about something – and then said something about being too fat. I mentally shrugged my shoulders and thought, “well…”
Yes, not nice of me – but that was my response. Then I looked at the guy and thought, “I don’t know what he is doing with her, he could certainly do much better than that.”
I found out that guy had moved to town the same time we did – turns out he was a pretty good guy. Also turns out it he was good at chemistry and math – which was good ’cause I wasn’t. At some point through the fall this guy started coming over to my house to tutor me in math – I had to pass it, but yuck – not my thing. So he came over – and we worked, and we laughed, and we became friends. At some point after Christmas it seemed things started to shift. Joking around was edging on flirting, touching more than necessary – just brief, brushes of hands and shoulders.
One day we were sitting at the table, math books spread open and he asks, “what do you think your parents would say if I asked you out?”
I think he kind of wanted to ask them himself, but I went and asked instead. They said yes. We went to a movie and out to eat – it was February 7, 1992. He was 23, I was 17.
He took me to my senior prom.
In June he didn’t go to my highschool graduation.
In July we were still dating, but it was strange. There was definitely something off.
In August we broke up.
I still saw him at church and all the various social events that were an extension of church. After a while the friendship returned. By the next summer we were talking regularly again. One night we were sitting in the church parking lot talking about dating – how hard it was to find someone to date who was a Christian and shared the same beliefs. Shortly after that we were talking one night about a new movie, he looks at me and asks if I want to go see it. I replied that would be fine – at this point not treating it as a date, just going out.
At some point he said he wanted to talk to me after the movie. I said OK, so we went across the street for ice cream.
He looked at me and said, “you remember we were talking about how hard it is to find someone to date?”
I responded that yes, I remember.
He says, “well, I was thinking, it is hard, but it isn’t like we need to find a lot of people, just one.”
“yeah, that’s true”, I said.
“Yeah, so, I was wondering… what do you think about going out again?”
That was in August.
February 7, 1994 we went out for dinner – at the now defunct Spaghetti Warehouse. After dinner he took me back to the church (the one we met at, and by that time he was living in) – said he left something inside, so I went in with him.
He asked me to marry him. Two years to the day after our first date. He was 25, I was 19.
Nine months later we were married in that same church. 18 months after our wedding our first child was dedicated in that same church and 12 months later our second child was dedicated there.
Yesterday was our 15th anniversary.
I love you, Tom, and I’m glad I get to spend the next 15 years with you, too.
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, ‘A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!
~Robert Browning
