Tomorrow will be my 12th wedding anniversary, so you’ll forgive me for the somewhat maudlin post. That’s a long time to spend with someone these days. Our marriage is almost a teenager! So in honor of this auspicious occasion, I’d like to entertain you with a little story.
Once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl. Their paths crossed when they were in the 6th grade. By the time high school rolled around, they were fast friends. Throughout high school, the boy would call the girl his best friend. Girls, of course, had multiple best friends, each ranked through the secret female algorithm of friendship, resulting in best friends, best-best friends, bff’s, etc. But she secretly thought of the boy as her best friend, too.
During their senior year, something in their friendship changed. The realization that high school was ending and that the girl was moving away to go to college cause the normally stoic boy to begin to think. And the thoughts he had were of companionship, friendship, loneliness, desire…and love. He realized that he loved the girl. These thoughts overrode his normal anxieties and fears and the boy kissed the girl. And confessed his love for her. The girl was overwhelmed and gladly returned his love, telling the boy that she had loved him for years but had abandoned any hope that the boy would return her feelings.
So the girl went away to college. As the poets say, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and their love for each other continued to grow. On a cold December evening, as the girl was back home visiting the boy, they went on a date. Nothing fancy; they strolled around downtown. The boy bought the girl a rose from a street vendor. And he led her to the park on the shores of the lake in the center of town. In this park was an outdoor amphitheater, annually a host to a Shakespeare festival, now silent, its stage bare. But it was a lovely place where one could walk through and sit in the audience seats under the stars and enjoy the feelings of being in a theater. This was something they both could appreciate, the girl being a theater major, the boy a former theater tech geek.
The boy took the girls hand and led the girl to the stairs leading from the audience to the bare stage. He guided her up onto the stage, right to the middle, the soft ambient lighting of the park making it feel like they were in a nighttime scene in a Shakespeare play. The boy got down on one knee and asked the girl to marry him.
As you have probably guessed, the boy was me. The girl was the Goddess. She accepted my proposal and, four years later, we were married. And 16 years later, we can still tell this story to each other and it still generates those little flurries in our tummies reminiscent of those heady days full of new love and the prospect of the coming adventure of a life lived together. An adventure that goes on to this day.
I love you, little darlin’. And I’m extremely happy that you agreed to share your life with me.
