Can't Hardly Wait- A Love Story
The Moth - Enthusiasm
The last quarter of every year is my favorite, kicking off with my birthday in mid September and ending in a merry celebration of holiday cheer and magic making. Then January arrives with cold weather and the drudgery of packing away the decorations and extinguishing the magical lights of Christmas. To ease the bite of January, I have decorated for Valentine’s Day in the same motion as I pack away the vestiges of Christmas and Hanukkah. Growing up in Michigan, any excuse to break up the real frozen monotony of Winter often meant a weekend away to a Holiday Inn and swimming in an indoor pool for the weekend over the Valentine holiday weekend. Now it is a fun way to mark the passage into the New Year without too much fanfare.
Growing up, I assumed I would follow the path of romance novels and fairytales, both fiction and real life examples. Grow up, meet a handsome boy in High School or College, marry in our early 20’s and have 2.5 children in our late twenties and live happily ever after. Sure, I wanted to establish a career of some kind and graduate college before having the Dream Children with the Fantasy Husband. We could even do a little bit of travel beyond a honeymoon to the Caribbean before settling down in a nice house in the ‘burbs. Like many in my High School class, I trundled off to the best college town on earth, Athens, Georgia and eagerly assumed I would meet my Prince Charming at the University of Georgia. Many long stories to be told in subsequent Substacks later, and I didn’t meet my husband until I was thirty -two years old and had one broken engagement under my belt.
My husband always disputes the telling of our “meet cute” when we are asked how we met. Yes, it was on a random May evening when I was meeting friends at their birthday party and he was just out with his friends for a Saturday night. I have the uncanny memory recall of an elephant so I caution our audiences to believe my retelling, but I also allow room for error. It is possible, that my husband told me “I think I know you” when we were chatting randomly at the bar waiting for our drinks. Or revealed to me he was a pilot within two minutes of striking up a conversation. The truth is likely where it always is, in the grey middle. He probably did feel like he knew who I was. I certainly did when I realized I loved him only a few months into dating.
Falling in love well past the age I planned to when I crafted my dream life was the greatest surprise of my life. Every love song was about us and the quiet moments that confirmed it was true love whispered “there you are” to validate not settling for less than a true love match. Cupids, flowers, and candy are all great for marketing and Hallmark card sales, but have you ever spent an entire date talking about every topic on earth and falling in love with someone’s mind? It also doesn’t hurt when you repeatedly tell your best friend since High School “But he is SO handsome, Belle, I’m serious!”. Connecting on multiple levels and having that spark, that is what dreams are made of and to have it come true is worth retelling in this season of love.
We celebrated ten years of marriage in the blink of an eye in October. We have traveled to many locations and had many adventures together. The wildest and best adventure has been parenthood. My favorite picture from our wedding day is the one that captures my dad and I ready to walk down the aisle to my beloved. I am a Daddy’s Girl, through and through, but that moment illustrates my focus on my future. I can hardly wait to get to him, my love, and begin the next chapter in our love story. We were micd for our wedding video and my sweet friend laughingly told us we were naughty for talking under our breaths through the whole wedding ceremony. I wasn’t a bride who cried during her wedding. I was too joyful and happy to commit to this man, to this partner who would be by my side to walk together and witness each other for as long as we had left in this lifetime.
