Eleven Years

ago today I met my husband. It was at a local restaurant over lunch, shortly after 9/11 so strangers were talking. Three hours passed and the others we’d been chatting with somehow disappeared.

We walked out to the parking lot, shook hands and exchanged phone numbers and he said maybe we’d go out to see a movie sometime as friends. The next night he called me and asked me to a movie and dinner and his local street guide for that town still has that page with my address on it.

He opened my door in the old Honda we said goodbye to a couple of years ago, took my hand and never let go. Oh, the anniversary of our first date was 11 years ago tomorrow.

While I was working as a consultant, I helped out friends in the immediate neighborhood with walking dogs, feeding cats, birds and fish. I had 14 visits that weekend and my husband came with me on every one.

He met Tweety, Moccasin, Coppertop, Harley, Zunnegga, Gus, Gigi, Savannah and more. He’d been recently laid off in the dot-bomb era so left town three weeks later, but came back the next week for an interview and moved back two weeks after that.

As a college grad, friends started getting married and there were many wedding magazines that showed a couple sharing a sofa and doing the crossword puzzle or reading the newspaper. I always yearned for that kind of closeness with someone.

No way here, as he’s very tall. We have an L-shaped sofa and our heads are together and I’m on the short end! But we know when to hold hands walking down the street (almost always) and he knows when I need his arm on an icy patch.

I take the dog in the morning and if she’s unwell (rarely) in the middle of the night. He does the last walk of the evening. I cook, he spills Dr. Pepper. We finish each others’ sentences. If that’s not closeness, I don’t know what is.

We switch movies. I’ve learned more about sci-fi than I ever knew. Ask me about Star Wars 4-6! He’ll exchange it for a chick flick. Horror or violence, he goes by himself or with a girlfriend of ours who enjoys the genre. I made him see Memoirs of a Geisha twice and paid for that for quite a while, and I’ll see Jane Austen by myself or with a girlfriend.

Marriage, like life, is a series of compromises. We don’t bend on key items that define our personalities but know what we want in a dog, a home, a city et al. That’s what it’s all about. So happy meeting anniversary, dearest! Dee