theology&geometry

:)

I met him on a Friday night in front of the Saucer. He was wearing a muted green polo shirt and his hair had gel in it. He offered a warm smile and a nice, easy hug. I was nervous beyond all reason; I’d never even heard his voice and I am bad, baaaaad at dating. We’d just exchanged a few Facebook messages and then some texts so I honestly had no idea what I was getting into. Somehow I had gotten enough liquid courage in the wee hours of the morning to suggest that we get those drinks we’d talked about when we flirted briefly on some shamefully meat-markety dating site. He took me up on my offer almost immediately and there we were, less than a day later, sizing each other up.

The Saucer had some crappy cover band playing and we didn’t feel like shouting over them. So we walked over to Beale Street and procured a couple of Big-Ass Beers and walked around in circles, chatting awkwardly and trying to sip gracefully while navigating the bricked street (not easy), until we spotted two folding chairs in some shrubs in an alley close to Fourth Street. We sat there and the minutes then hours ticked by as we talked. Our conversation was easy and comfortable. We had the right kinds of things in common and we made each other laugh. He was smart and funny and cute and within that first hour I had developed the kind of breath-sucking big crush that I have only had a few times in my entire life. I couldn’t believe how nice and normal and good looking and charming this guy was.

I knew that night that I had met someone special, someone I hoped would be important in my life. I can’t say he thought the same thing about me, but I think I made a pretty good impression.

He kissed me in one of those well-maintained alleyways off of the Main Street Mall, and I didn’t care who saw.

It didn’t take long after meeting each other for us to become inseparable. Hours spent together turned into days then weeks then months. Our lives stitched together nearly seamlessly until I couldn’t remember what it had felt like before I got to spend every night with him.

I knew I loved him long before I actually had the courage to tell him. He had become my best friend, my bad-joke sounding board, and my verbal sparring partner. He’s as stubborn and hard-headed as I am, and he has that lawyerly way of loving to argue for the sake of arguing. (I have that journalist’s devil’s advocate way of loving to argue. Also I think I’m always right. Aaaand so does he.) His personality has helped me tease out the things about my own that I would like to change, but it’s also helped me learn how to stand fast on the things I believe in, and fight for those things even when pushed so hard it hurts. He’s sweet in a way that is often quiet but that suits me. He attacks me with hugs while I’m oblivious to the world, working on the computer. Some nights I come home from work, flustered, and he has dinner on the table and candles lit everywhere in the living room. He’s passionate about justice. He likes poetry and sports. And he’s so goddamn goofy sometimes that I wish he would let me film and broadcast every thing he does, because the world needs more of his antics. And he’s so easy on the eyes, I would be doing the world a favor.

I never expected to get what I have gotten out of meeting that dude on Beale Street a year ago. Never. And yet here we are, building a life and a family together.

Three hundred sixty-six days ago, I had no idea how quickly so much love could grow in my life. Today, I couldn’t be happier about that surprise.

More than three decades and my dad still calls my mom his “green-eyed beauty.”

Cheers, you crazy kids.

As I understand it, my parents came together when my mom was in business school in Jackson, Tenn., doing her best to socialize with peers even though the bulk of her time was spent caring for her young daughter (my sister). Mom started hanging out sometimes with this gal named Cindy and Cindy had a brother named Steve. Cindy had Steve and my mom meet one night at a Jackson dance club and that was that. Cindy’s my aunt now. Oh, and I exist.

Dec. 21 was the day they made it official.

I don’t know how they’ve done it. I can’t imagine doing anything for thirty years, especially since I’ve not even been alive that long. But they did it. I’m amazed. And incredibly grateful. It is rare for a person my age to have made it this far with parents who still even speak to each other using polite phrases. More than any other element of my life, my parents have had an unbelievable impact on how I live. Sure, I might be a foul-mouthed heathen with extremely questionable taste in everything from men to music, but I think I turned out okay.

I didn’t get it when I was sixteen. My parents were tyrants who tried to control every aspect of my life, and my home life was terribly oppressive. Of course. But now I get it. They were attentive. They kept me out of trouble — my parents were the kind of parents who wouldn’t let me hang out with kids unless they could meet the kids AND their parents — and encouraged me to seek higher ground in all things when practical. Always climb when there was territory to be covered that I thought was worth exploring. I’ve never forgotten that. And to this day the thing that drives me is the notion of making my parents proud. That’s still it for me. Because what would make them proud would make me proud. For the most part.

I owe so much to them. To their union. To their ability to tell what I would need from them as I got older and their own discipline so that they would be able to provide that to me. To their insistence on instilling a real work ethic in me. To their stability. To their laughter. To their strategic building of my independence. To their willingness to let me be who I am in ways they don’t agree with. And to their unrelenting love in the face of everything else.

Just tonight, only my third or so Christmas Eve away from my family, my dad called to check on me and make sure I was okay alone. Yeah, I was okay. Lonely, maybe, but okay. He told me happy birthday, and how much I meant to him. I am a sentimental fool when given the chance, but I held it together. Earlier today my mom had called to make sure I was going to be able to get home (see? I still call their house “home”) Sunday for our celebration (since I was scheduled to work Christmas Eve and Day) before my dad had to go to work at 3. I could tell she was trying to make sure that we all got at least an hour or two together; our family deals with shift work and nurses on call and newspaper employees and hospice workers but we manage face time somehow every year. Because we are what’s important and we all know it.

Thirty years. They’ve made it work. They’ve had fun, too.

I simply could not be more grateful.

I want my mom’s shirt, jeans, fingernails and hair. Oh wait. I’ve got the fingernails. Except I can’t get mine to grow out that long.

And check out my dad, with the awesome trucker hat (before trucker hats were kitschy-cool) and that Grizzly Adams beard. And my sister with her sweet blonde hair and evil glowing retinas.

Happy anniversary!