Eight Years Ago Today…

April 2, 2000, eight years ago (or 2,922 days – including two leap years – for those who are counting), was a beautiful Sunday. That morning, I got up and out of bed in my one-bedroom apartment. I put on my khaki pants and a light blue shirt. Rather than wear my contacts, I had on my tortoise-shell glasses.

I had some work to do at school – I was in my first year of grad school – and afterwards, I headed in my car downtown to meet a boy. I only knew this boy through the internet – we met two weeks earlier on Match.com. This was before it was de rigeur to post a picture, before you could “wink” at someone and before Dr. Phil invaded with his, bald pate, glaring white teeth and obviously fake tan. It was pretty darn simple back then. You sign up, answer some questions and then it starts spitting out the different members in your general area who remotely match your answers.

This boy was a 94% match to me, but his little narrative on his profile immediately struck me; I had to meet him. I emailed him that first time while I was procrastinating on a school assignment, and later learned that he almost didn’t write back. Apparently, he had three bad dates in a row on Match.com and had pretty much given it up. But, the Internet Fairy must have been looking out for us because the email still was delivered. Of course, I knew nothing of this at the time. All I knew was that I was interested and I had stuck my toe in the water.

He did email me back and we embarked on an old-fashioned daily electronic letter-writing courtship. It was he who suggested meeting. Of course, I had been agonizing over whether to bring this up, but luckily, he saved me from having to make a decision. A date was set, physical descriptions were exchanged and promises to wear certain clothing were made.

When I got to the appointed place at the appointed time, I saw him before he saw me. Sure enough, he was wearing the Hawaiian shirt with steamships as he had promised. He was pacing and looking rather grumpy. I walked up to him and introduced myself and there was the smile. I won’t say that it was love at first sight, but that smile was wonderful. We started walking to our brunch destination and didn’t stop talking. We ended up having an all-day date and the rest, as they say, is history.

That boy is now my husband. My Sweetie. He is my lovely day, my sunshine and my rock. And I look forward to thousands more days together, come rain or shine, hell or high water (we’ve been through both), or whatever else life throws at us.

Eight years ago today I met the man who I would end up marrying and today, eight years later, I have my graduate degree, we have owned two houses together, we completely renovated one house, we moved to a new city where we knew all of 2 people, we adopted two kittens (who are now 5 year old whiny beasts), we’ve each had a surgery, and we’ve endured three years of infertility with two miscarriages, among other highlights.

We have also laughed more than is probably legal, fought very rarely (and fairly), and just been the best spouse to the other. And it all started eight years ago when I ventured into the unknown. I love you, Sweetie.