Let's rewind back to the carefree days of yore, when I was a mere 21 year old college student at UC Santa Cruz, full of dreams, ideologies, booze and bad decisions.
Always liking to keep a little green in my pocket, I was working at the front desk of a hotel near the Boardwalk. After living in Santa Cruz for a few years, I had come to love the winter months because it meant fewer tourists, which translated into me getting paid to do my homework while manning the front desk. The hotel, however, had a different agenda comprised of the money making mentality and, in an effort to fill their rooms they decided to rent out the top floor to college students. Little did I know that this one decision (and several questionable choices on my part) would alter the course of my life forever.
One fateful afternoon as the sun was starting to sink lower in the sky, I was sitting at the front desk alternating between mindlessly staring at my Sociology book and wishfully glaring at the second hand on the clock as it slowly ticked away the final hours of my seemingly endless shift. Just as I decided time couldn't possibly move any more monotonously, in walked the future husband and just like that, time stood still.
I like to remember this moment because, as unrealistic and sappy as it sounds, it was one of those split seconds where life changes completely. I try to go back to this moment when we are yelling at one another, arguing about how it isn't rocket science to put dirty clothes in the hamper rather than on the floor of the bathroom, how if he comes home to one more of my online shopping packages on the doorstep we are going to go bankrupt, and oh my god HOW do you NOT hear the baby SCREAMING?! I fall back into this memory because we have been together for 10 years and we have met more than our share of challenges, but from the instant I looked up from that front desk a decade ago, I knew that no matter where life took me from that point forward, he would be along for the ride.
He walked into the office and stood in front of the front desk. The way the afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the blinds highlighted his green eyes, making them sparkle. He smiled and I never heard him say hello because oh sweet Jesus, the man had dimples. And I kid you not, though it might make you puke, I thought to myself "that is the man I am going to marry and he doesn't even know it."
He, however, only remembers that my face turned beet red and he thought to himself (probably in a voice similar to that of a caveman), "Huh. Her face is really red." Typical.
The reason he was standing in front of me, eyes all twinkling, dimples all dimpling, was because he had lost his room key. I made him a key and off he went, leaving me sputtering and blushing and being completely uncool.
From that point forward, he would come in almost every shift I worked with the excuse that he had lost his key. I would make him a new one and watch him ride his bike to baseball practice, smugly thinking that he definitely was totally into me because seriously, no one loses their key every. single. day.
What a fool I was! Here we are, married with a baby, and he literally loses his key every. single. day. It was no excuse to talk to me, he was not playing flirty games, he was not determined to date me. He just couldn't find his key and at the end of the day, the man needed to get into his room.
He and the other students living on the top floor used to play a little beer pong in the hallway. They would store their beers in the ice machine and the guests on the lower floors would call me and complain about the noise. I would run up to the top floor and not wanting him to think I was a square, I would slam a beer, blush wildly, ask them nicely to keep it down and then run away.
One night, we ran into each other at the Seabright Brewery. I was dressed up and absolutely tipsy enough to be incredibly witty and full of hilarious stories that made me adorable. I was just enough fun that his friends invited me to a party afterward, but I sadly declined because he didn't invite me himself. He and his baseball buddies left the bar with a dimpled goodbye and a noncommittal maybe I'll see you later, and that was that.
I didn't hear from him for three days. I furiously wrote him off, telling myself that he could take his sparkly green eyes and shove it up his sparkly Greene ass for all I cared. I had better things to do, like hitting up happy hour and, and, .... and then the phone rang. It was one of his friends asking if I had heard from him.
"NO!" I yelled. "And if you see him, tell him - "
Before I could finish my sentence, his friend told me to take a deep breath and prepare myself because he wasn't ignoring me. He had gotten himself into a bit of a sticky situation and was having trouble charming his way out of it.
Apparently, my dimpled green eyed dream boy had channeled his country boy roots and hot wired a steamroller. This may be common practice in his little home town of Arbuckle, but driving it down 7th Avenue in Santa Cruz in the middle of the night is, folks, a felony. Being the daughter of a very strict dad who happened to be in law enforcement, I sadly thought that this might be the end of our love story.
Remember when I said I was young and full of bad decisions?
I had every intention to go to the gym. Every intention. But the gym was right by the courthouse, and would it really hurt if I just popped in to see if his arraignment was around that time? And there he was, in all his orange glory, being laughed at by the judge as he ruled that this boy was no felon, he was just stooopid.
And so a love story was born amidst the rubble of a narrowly avoided misadventure. 10 years have come and gone and we look back, shake our heads, laugh a little and turn the page, knowing that we can't rewrite the chapters that have brought us to this point. And even if we could, would we? We have the blank pages of tomorrow's chapters waiting for the next ridiculous story to be written. He will probably leave his dirty clothes on the floor and I will definitely continue to shop online and oh my god seriously, you HAVE to hear the baby SCREAMING!
But his green eyes still sparkle when the sun hits them just right and when our baby smiles, I can see his dimples on her sweet face. And that's enough for me.
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| We're so little! Circa 2004 |
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