When Was It?

Throughout our marriage, my husband has always pin-pointed the “moment” he fell in love with me.

“When I took you home to meet my family,” he said.  He took me home A WEEK after we’d started dating.  I was a wreck.  Seriously.  Coming from a small town, I already knew the parents of everyone I had dated.  I’d never had to meet any before.  But I did.  I put on my John Deere shirt, my overalls, my lucky red shoes, and I DID IT.

As we spent the weekend with his family, my husband never said one word about love.  He didn’t say one word about love the next weekend either, when I took revenge and drove him home to meet MY family (it wasn’t really revenge though.  With steaks like my dad makes?  Oh, boy).  He didn’t say a word about love anytime that month.

Finally, right when I was cleaning out my college house to move home, he sat me down on the couch and he told me he thought he might be falling in love with me.

The truth was, he was already gone.  Done fallen.  But he wanted to tread the waters of love on the safe shallow end instead of jumping off the high dive into the deep end (on account of other women treatin’ him bad.  It’s all very vintage country music, minus the whiskey).

Finally, on June 1st 2004 (happy birthday, Tia!) I told him that I loved him.  And he said it back.  And 26 days later we got engaged.  And six 1/2 years later, we stayed up after the kids had gone to bed and engaged in a heated game of Pirates Battleship.  What can I say?  We’re too cheap to pay a babysitter for our hot Friday night date.  I’m happy to report that I beat him, fair and square.  I’m also happy to report that he made a hot chocolate run and added french vanilla creamer to both of our cups, just like we used to do when we were dating and he lived next to a Circle K.  So delicious.

After we were done playing, we started talking.  I’m going to confess to you right now that we actually talked until 3:15.  As in: AM.  Why do we do that to ourselves?  Why, oh why?  Because there’s so much to talk about, I guess.  There’s so much to laugh about.  Apparently, there’s still a few things to reveal.  For example, I finally confessed that I hate belly buttons.  They really gross me out, and I refuse to touch mine unless I’m pregnant and it’s flat.  He confessed something as well.  He told me that the weekend he took me home to meet his family, there was a particular kiss.  He described it.  I remembered it.

He confessed that THAT kiss… THAT moment… was it.  The exact moment that he fell in love and knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me.  The rest is history in the making.