A Love Story From The Y-Not...

On August 31, 2004, I went on my very first "date" with my now husband.  I had met him months before but I was going through a very horrifying divorce.  I met him in a bar.  Yep.  I said a bar.  Cliche right? 

This wasn't my first "rodeo" as they say. 

I met my first husband at my work when I was a little over 16 years old...I married him when I was 19 and had our son right before my 21st birthday.  That marriage lasted until our son was a few months old.  I will save you all of the details and fast forward.  My son's dad and I have become very good friends and the "perfect" divorced parents.

I met my second husband in high school when I was 15.  We began as friends and remained friends until we were 18 and then lost touch after graduation.  We reconnected just before my 22nd birthday.  We had the all American love story.  He romanced me, cooked me crab, we got married, we bought a house, he was the prefect step father to my son and then we had Hailey.  Enter emotions that neither of us dealt with very well and the horrifying divorce.  I was 29 years old.

I am a fan of saying that he won all of our friends in the divorce.  It was like the judge awarded them to him.  It is odd how people take sides...The thing is that I had separated myself emotionally from mostly everyone after Hailey was born so it was easy for them all to take the position that I was the bad guy.  That was ok with me.  I wore the bad guy label like a badge of honor.

Enter the bar scene.  I decided since everyone in my life had decided that I was a "bad guy" that I should live up to that label.  I have to say that I am now using the label in the most innocent sense of the word...it was actually a more sinister label full of hatred and awful rumors back then.  So I found this local bar and I went in.  I found something amazing...People who were willing to sit there and listen to me cry.  A place where I could reinvent myself in the way that I dealt with Hailey's disability.  A place where I wasn't only Hailey's mom...where I wasn't defined by her disorder.  Where I didn't have to talk about cri du chat unless I wanted to.

Hailey's dad and I had a 50/50 split of time in our house and of Hailey and everything else at this time.  We were house sharing and thought at the time that it would be best for the kids if we kept that arrangement.  We also decided that we shouldn't tell our families quite yet...It was dysfunctional at best!

During this bar scene time, I met this guy.  He was crazy and bold and handsome and aggressive and gentle all at the same time.  He was like no one that I had ever met before.  He was funny at one moment and serious in the next.  Extremely intelligent and able to discuss current events and politics and religion.  His favorite saying at the time was "I don't have to lie to kick it" which was refreshing...if not a little "young" for me.  He got my phone number by "borrowing my phone" and calling himself (smooth I know :-) He was 5 years younger than me...really a baby in my eyes at that time.  No kids, no house, no responsibilities.  I think that his only goal at that point was to make sure he was at the bar at every moment that I was!  It was awesome and amazing...the flirting.  And the innocence of it.  Because I had already decided that I was not getting involved with anyone...and if I ever did get married again, it was certainly going to be for money and never again for love!!

Our first date wasn't a planned thing.  He didn't really ask me out or anything.  I was upset and sitting at the bar.  It was my cousin's birthday and she had passed away years before.  I was crying in my beer, quite literally.

Up comes this guy and says, let's go do something...And so I went.  At this point, I was thinking that he was going to take me to dinner or somewhere romantic or to a movie or something fancy.  That was what I was used to...but not this guy.  I kept asking where we were going but he said it was a surprised.  He stopped at the gas station and bought a 6 pack of corona and parked in a parking lot.  Then he said, come on we are going for a walk.  By the way...I had heels on.  I was dressed for a bar, not for a walk and I told him that.  So he said, well take them off...and I did.  And we walked by the river for a long time.  It was the simplest date I had ever been on.  And he let me cry and talk about my cousin and about my divorce and about my crazy life and about Hailey.  It was so refreshing.  He didn't judge me, not with his words or with his eyes.  I think that it was the first time in years that I was able to really be who I was.  I didn't have to be the all American mother or wife.  I was just me.

I think that I fell in love with him right there on river bank...with muddy feet and my heels sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans and a corona in my hand.

That is what I love most about him and the love that we have.  It is simple.

Sometimes I expect him to take me to some fancy dinner and movie.  Sometimes I want him to romance me.  And he does all of those things.  But most of our best memories are simple.

Like sleeping in the back of the car on the beach in Humboldt.  Walking on the trails.  Hiking in the redwoods.

And I love him the most when I see him walking with Hailey or Aubrey or talking with Zach.  I love him more every day.

Here's to the rest of our lives together.  It seems like yesterday that he was using some cheesy pick up line in a dive bar called the Y-Not...and there went my plans of marrying for money!