My Valentine

So there is this girl I know. She is smart and beautiful. She's kind and loving. She is sexy. She smells of vanilla. The first time we met was in a group setting. She wore blue jeans and a white blouse. I couldn't keep my eyes off this cute girl. I called her several times thereafter, thinking of any excuse to talk to her. After awhile I would call her on the way to meet her at her apartment. We would talk and talk, and before I knew it, I'd already missed my turn several miles back. The first time (yes, this has happened on more than one occasion) when I got there, she showed me her Lord of the Rings "encyclopedia" that was about as large as her coffee table. Ok not that large, but it was big and it went into all the terminologies from TLOTR. It turns out she was into linguistics. I listened to her talk about this whole new world in terms of languages. And I listened because she was so enthusiastic and I loved it. I met her cat Kitty. I found out that Kitty does have a name, but the cat being deaf...well, Kitty just stuck. The important thing here is that Kitty approved of me during that first meeting and for that I am grateful.

Flash forward and we are on the beach, just the two of us spending a whole day together. It was the perfect day. No rain, not too hot, not too cold. Nope...the stars had aligned for us. The day at the beach led into the night at the beach. I had worked up the nerve to tell her I liked her. We kissed. Yes, I remember we kissed for a long time that night. We were cold and shivering laying down on the sand that night. We did not care. It was a great excuse to get closer. I don't remember what we talked about that night, but we stayed out there till 4 in the morning. At one point, someone must have thought we were homeless and dropped a blanket beside us. May have even offered us coffee. From that point on we were beach bums. We spent every waking hour together going to this beach or the other. We explored. We got loss. The first time I remembered seeing shooting stars was with her on the beach.

Before long, we were living together in two separate apartments. We would lug our gear to the other's apartment for days at a time. Did it make sense? No. But when does love ever make sense? Then we decided to look for a place together. We found a really nice townhome we both fell in love with. We bought the place. We celebrated with Taco Bell and champagne on the empty floor that first night. We did the same when we moved into the house we live in now (and so it became our celebration tradition). Years later, we are married (I proposed on the beach, and we got married on the beach). We have a beautiful daughter (and guess how we celebrated finding out we were going to be parents - substitute sparkling grape juice for champagne). She'll grow up to call her parents babe and baby, because that is how we refer to each other all the time.

So on this Valentine's day I find myself thinking about her and all the things we have done together. I am looking at old pictures of us together and am reminded of how dorky we were. I take that back...how dorky we are. It has been quite a journey to get to this point. Since it is Valentine's day, the question comes to us...why do we love each other? I do not know. I just do. She is dorky and clumsy. The phrase "where are my keys, I lost my phone" comes to mind. She hates mushrooms...really hates mushrooms. She has to always have a sweater on hand. That is who she is, and I just love her for each of those characteristics and much more. I never question it or try to figure out why...I just do and am happy to leave it at that.
We are a young couple still fumbling through parenthood. I suspect we will be for quite some time if not indefinitely. But I look forward to fumbling through this life with her. She makes life wonderful. I love her. Here's to growing old together, walking along the beach and collecting shells. My future valentine's date. Sounds lovely, right?

There are a lot of photos of Lily on this blog. Here are a few of us down memory lane for a change.

Khan