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I have often heard people speak of true love, but for me, it was more of a sense of what was right, like the right amount of cinnamon, or the right amount of wine. And as far as other things I have heard, to say that I was his is not at all a phrase I find accurate, though I might say I was devoted to him, And I did not know if I would be with [him] when we were 12 and 15, or 54 and 57, but I knew that I should be.
– from A Still Small Voice, by John Reed
Yesterday was David’s 3oth birthday. I wanted to post something yesterday, but with all of the birthday activity, and being sick, I didn’t get a chance to. Today, I’m home sick from work, so I thought I’d take advantage of the free time and tell you a little something about him.
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A year ago, David and I sat on a bench at the Navy Memorial, trying to talk our way through the very complicated beginning of our relationship. It was a Friday after work, the day before his birthday; I had taken him to lunch earlier since I wasn’t expecting to be able to see him again until Monday. I had written him a letter telling him 10 things he didn’t know about me and baked him cookies, which I left on his desk before he got in to work. He loved both the letter and the cookies.
We were talking about how the beginning works, when everything’s so complicated. He was afraid of making a big change; I was afraid of never getting to be with him. We knew that this was a chance we had to take, or risk wondering about it for the rest of our lives, but the first step was very scary. Around and around we went, each of us fighting the other, trying to make our way to common ground.
Eventually, the talking stopped and we just looked at each other, searching each other’s eyes, wondering if we were thinking the same thing. I decided to risk it, and leaned in. He stopped me.
“Wait,” he said. “I want to tell you before I kiss you.”
“What?” I asked, hoping I was right about what was next.
“I love you,” he said.
I smiled with tears in my eyes. “I love you, too.” I said.
And that was that. We’ve been together ever since.
It hasn’t always been a walk in the park, obviously, but even when it was so hard a couple of months ago, there wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be. David is my other half in so many ways; even after a year, he’s still the first person I want to tell things to, the first person I want to do anything with, the only person I can imagine waking up to every day and coming home to every night, the person who believes in me when I don’t believe in myself, the one who supports me and encourages me and helps me up when I stumble, the one who seems to understand me the way no one else can. His are the arms I want around me when the world feels like too much; his are the arms I burrow into each night as I fall asleep, knowing there isn’t a single place on earth I’d rather be.
I love the way, if I’m walking behind him, he absentmindedly reaches his hand back for me to take, because he wants me next to him. I love the way he comes up and kisses me out of the blue for no reason. I love that we casually say, “When we get married . . .” or “When we have kids . . .” like it’s a foregone conclusion, with no doubt that it will ever come to pass. I love that he takes such good care of the tomatoes, even though he won’t eat them. I love that he acts as my ears without either of us even realizing it. I love the way he brushes me off every morning when I tell him how handsome he looks (“You say that every day”) because I know he’s secretly pleased to hear it. I love the tilt of his head when he’s about to say something sweet to me, and the way he secretly touches my leg under the table when we’re out to dinner. I love that every time we drive somewhere more than an hour away, we have to be sure we find a Sheetz so that he can get a vanilla cappucino.
He’s so smart, and he makes me laugh every day. He makes me a better person in so many ways, and I know that I’m lucky to have found him. I hope I get to write one of these every year.
Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.
– Kahlil Gibran
I came across this link today through a monthly email digest I get. For some reason, this makes me almost unbearably sad. Is it just me?
Now the seats are all empty
Let the roadies take the stage
Pack it up and tear it down
They’re the first to come and the last to leave . . .
But when that last guitar’s been packed away
You know that I still want to play
So just make sure you got it all set to go
Before you come for my piano
– Jackson Browne, The Load Out
Last Wednesday night, my apartment looked like this:
(Sorry for the quality – these are from my phone because my camera was packed!)
At nine Thursday morning, movers showed up, packed up the truck, and hauled all my worldly possessions four blocks to the two-bedroom townhome-style apartment that David and I will share officially as of this Saturday! That’s the big news I alluded to in the last post, and it’s really exciting! We’ve been talking about moving in together literally as long as we’ve been together, and David’s lease is up this month, so we figured out a way to make it work, even though my lease wasn’t up til August.
I guess it might seem silly to hire movers to move four blocks, but we couldn’t move this past weekend because we had to be out of town, and they wouldn’t hold the apartment for us an extra week, so I had to move during the week. That meant no one could help – even David had to work – and I have some large furniture that I definitely couldn’t have moved on my own. Plus, with movers, it took one trip instead of the 10 or so it might have taken me on my own. It was totally worth it, and I’d be surprised if I ever move on my own again, it was that easy. If you need to move in the D.C. area, let me know and I’ll give you the name of the company I used – they were great!
We move David this weekend, and we should have plenty of help – Karen and my brother are coming up and we’ll have a couple of local friends to pitch in as well. David has less stuff than me, and less big stuff (except for his giant TV and his bed), and we plan to move batches of stuff over this week so hopefully it won’t take too long on Saturday.
The new place is both good and bad. A lot of what I don’t like is just the change from what I lived in for so long, and we all know I don’t do change well. Like, there’s no room for the salt and pepper on the back of the stove – which is just where it goes – in the new place because the microwave is much lower over the stove. And the apartment isn’t renovated, so the appliances are older and smaller than the ones I had and the microwave doesn’t have a turntable. Lucky for me, they make a thing called a Micro Go Round. And there’s not enough cabinet space in the kitchen. But is there ever in an apartment?
But I love that it’s two bedrooms, and we have ceiling fans in the bedrooms, and the guest bedroom has a big window seat, and parking is way better at the new place than it was at my old place, even though it’s in the same complex – we’ve never had any trouble parking, even late at night.
But the best part of it, of course, is that it’s ours. Mine and David’s. And this is just the beginning.
[He] stared as if he would never stop searching for my face, because he knew he would find something good there.
– from The Book of Ruth, by Jane Hamilton
Things David loves, in order (as told to me Tuesday night):
1. me
2. his big-screen TV
3. the Detroit Tigers
“Real life hardly ever does it the way you want to tell it later.”
– Alice, in Range of Motion, by Elizabeth Berg
But sometimes it does.
Now I promise my blog is not going to become all “I’m in love” all the time, but you guys, I am, and I had the best weekend of my life this past weekend. We spent most of last weekend together, and many nights last week, just hanging out, running errands, and watching the Olympics, but it was very casual and low key, for various reasons. All of last week, though, he kept telling me how he was planning our first real date for Friday night and that I should dress up (which is code for “Wear the dress that started all of this”), and that he thought I would really love the restaurant he chose, and that he was going to come pick me up and come to the door and everything. He also told me about 10 times that he’d already picked out the shirt he was going to wear and that he thought I’d really like it, but that he wanted to buy new pants. It was so adorable. Saturday, he said, would be more casual, and he told me about the restaurant beforehand and let me pick a movie.
So Friday came and we rode the train home together, but each of us went to our own apartments to get ready. Around 8, he rang my doorbell, and I opened it shyly, and there he was, holding a single red rose (he’d brought me daisies last weekend) and looking so handsome in a white button down shirt with different colored blue stripes and new gray pants. I invited him in and gave him a kiss (or two or three, you know), and we just stood there grinning stupidly at each other (which happens a lot actually; we’re kind of dorks that way). He told me I looked great and we kissed some more and then we drove to the restaurant. As we got out of the car, he said, “We parked a little ways from the restaurant, and for good reason.” And as we walked out of the shadow of a building into the square, he pointed and said, “Full moon.”
As we walked to the restaurant, my heels kept getting stuck in the cobblestones (that’ll teach me), and he kept catching me so I wouldn’t fall. When we got to the restaurant, I didn’t look at the outside of it very closely because I thought I knew what it was, but it turned out I was wrong. When we got to our table and I looked at the menu, I realized he had chosen a Spanish restaurant . . . I can’t really explain the feeling I got, but I knew that he’d chosen it on purpose because he remembered that I had studied in Spain twice and loved it so much, and he wanted to take me to a place that would remind me of it. Have I mentioned that I love him?
He studied the wine list – he’s very into wine and I know nothing, though he’s trying to teach me – and ordered a bottle of Rioja. When the waiter brought the bottle, he did the whole, look at the bottle, nod approval at the waiter, swirl the wine in the glass, smell it, swish it around in his mouth, swallow it, and nod again for the waiter to pour our glasses – I kind of watched him and seeing him do all that made me smile so big. The wine was lovely, and we ordered lots of tapas and ate and talked and drank for what seemed like hours, but was really probably only and hour and a half or so. If I tell you the big thing he said to me over dinner, you’ll think we’re crazy, so I won’t (yet, probably), but that was definitely the best meal of my life.
Afterwards, we walked down to the waterfront. It was a perfect night: full moon, just the right temperature, breezy. We walked along the water, then stopped to watch the planes (or to kiss, but who’s keeping track, really?) and just talk some more. Finally, we headed back to the car, and just before we got there, we stopped to kiss, and the combination of my 4-inch heels on cobblestone, his big feet, the wine, and the sudden stop led to our feet getting tangled and his foot landed on mine and broke the toenail of my big toe pretty far down the nail bed. It hurt like crap, but we kissed anyway, and it was only after I got in the car that I realized I was bleeding. Yikes. He kept apologizing, but I told him not to worry because it’s going to be the funny part of the story of our otherwise perfect first date.
Saturday afternoon, I picked him up and we went to see Pineapple Express. It was the captioned movie last week, and I worried that he would think that was weird, but he says he doesn’t mind at all. The movie was so, so funny. I love Seth Rogen, and James Franco was as good as advertised. We laughed so much, though we don’t need a movie to do that. Then we went to Rustico for beer and pizza, though I had a burger. He had a double chocolate stout (which I didn’t hate), and I had a Hawaiian pale ale of some sort, which was pretty good. We talked about the inanity of the parents of three at a nearby table who’d brought a portable DVD player for the kids (all under 4) to watch while they ate dinner – why bring your kids out if you’re not interested in interacting with them? Get a baby-sitter, for crying out loud. Anyway, we talked about our families and discovered that Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday, and agreed that we don’t have to do Valentine’s Day.
Next, we drove to Gravelly Point, which is a park on the water near the airport. We sat and watched the planes take off, which put this song in my head, and held hands and talked – we can talk forever. Then we walked a ways down the path, quizzing each other on whether we’d leave each other for various outlandish infractions. The verdict: I have to stay with him if he just gets indicted for a felony, but I can leave him if he gets convicted. I can’t remember what he’s allowed to leave me for; prostitution, I think.
Then we came back to my place for chocolate milk (just one of many things that one of us has mentioned to which the other one has said, “I love ___,” eliciting a kiss from the first one – it’s eerie, really) for dessert, then some beer and Olympics watching.
Sunday, we had tentative plans to get a little bit out of town, but we were lazy lazy lazy in the morning, so I just cooked him breakfast – pancakes and bacon – and then dropped him off so he could do stuff around his house, and I did my own errands. Around 5, he picked me up and we went to the wine store and the grocery store, then to his place, where he cooked for me for the first time – a delicious chicken stir fry. He takes such good care of me. We sat on the balcony for a little while, drinking wine and enjoying the night, then came in to watch Mad Men. He indulges my furious girl crush on Christina Hendricks, who plays Joan – he says it means he can cheat on me with her even if she’s not on his List, because I couldn’t possibly blame him. I’m not sure he’s wrong. But when I turned the tables and said I can do the same with George Clooney then, because he LOVES George, he wasn’t so happy. I’d actually rather have Joan.
So there you go. That’s my idea of a perfect weekend. He did such a good job planning Friday and Saturday – Friday especially – and just being with him, doing the things we’d do anyway, but doing them together, is all I ever wanted.
But now I’ve got to plan a weekend for him. Good thing I have about a month til we have a free weekend all to ourselves again.
“I think they should invent a new word, a word that describes the moment before you kiss someone . . . It’s like the moment a bird decides it can fly.”
– Grace, on Once and Again (now that is a show that got canceled way before its time, if you ask me)
That’s what he kept asking me, as we sat across the table from each other for hours two weeks ago, after he told me he knew he needed to be with me. That’s what he said, my handsome boy with gorgeous blue eyes and sweet smile that makes me feel like a million bucks, as we confessed how long we’d had feelings for each other and discovered that we’d wanted to kiss each other from exactly the same moment. He looked at me like he couldn’t quite believe his luck, which was exactly the way I was looking at him, and so I knew just what he meant when he asked, “Who are you, and where did you come from?”
I can’t imagine anyone who’s a better fit for me than him, and I marvel at the way we found each other, week after week, a little at a time, until we just couldn’t deny it any longer. I realize how easily I could have missed him, and I am so thankful that we didn’t pass each other by. I finally know what people mean when they say, “You’ll just know when you’ve found the right one.” I can tell him anything, and I’m not scared I’m going to mess it up, and all of the things I always worried about in relationships are falling away, and we are in love like I didn’t think I could ever be.
People think I’m crazy to feel this way because, technically, it hasn’t been that long, but I don’t care because it’s actually been such a long time coming, and I’ve known that I love him for what seems like ages, and I just always knew it was somehow going to work itself out, as complicated as it was (and I assume that regular readers now know who I’m talking about). I understand their concern, and I keep it in the back of my mind, but all I can say is, I have never in my life been so sure of anything as I am that he and I were made for each other, and I am not going to question it.
I’m in love, you guys, with someone who loves me back. That is an amazing thing. I’m so lucky.
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life – music and cats.
– Albert Schweitzer
Does that scare you?
I’ll let you run away
But your heart will not oblige you
You’ll remember me like a melody
Yeah, I’ll haunt the world inside you
— Fiona Apple, Slow Like Honey
I’ve been thinking about love a lot lately, and I want to know:
How do you know you’re in love? When was the last time you fell in love? Was it requited or not? Did you tell the person who inspired the feeling? Have you ever fallen out of love? How did you explain that to the other person? What do you do when you love a person you know you can’t have? Have you ever fallen in love unexpectedly?
You don’t have to answer all of those questions, but I’m interested in whatever you’re willing to share.
What People Are Saying