How Do You Fall in Love?
This post was inspired by a series of posts at Seven Inches of Sense whereupon a number of women share the stories of how they fell in love with soldiers. You should read them all, because they are really good.But, I want to discuss how I ended up with Prince Charming.
Let's get strapped into the way-back machine, shall we?
In college, I was involved with a Texan. He was a team-roping, bull-riding cowboy who fought fires for the Navy. Ours was a long-distance relationship as he was usually on a ship somewhere or momentarily in some foreign port. I was busy at school, chasing an Agronomy degree. We mailed letters and sometimes found a few moments on the phone, but it was mostly long months between contact. All the better for my studies, I suppose.
I graduated in May 1996 from the University of Illinois with High Honors. From there, I started working 25 miles west of school in the little town of Farmer City. Two weeks after I started my new job, the cowboy called and asked me to marry him. He wanted me to come to Virginia Beach as soon as possible because he was shipping out again in a month.
Needless to say, that didn't happen. The engagement was broken and my seemingly broken little heart buried itself in a new career. Fast forward 18 months. I'm excelling at my job but am still pining. They hire some new guy at work and one of my many duties is to bring him up to speed on safety. I do so. The secretaries and I are planning an outing a few weeks later and on a whim, we invite him along. And he agrees.
We are all drinking and having a good time. This guy is friendly and fun. We are dancing and more drinking ensues. At some random point in the evening, I reach that point where I am begging for the cherries in people's drinks so that I can attempt to tie the stem in a knot with my tongue. Yeah. I used to be one of those girls.
I'm a bit too tipsy to manage the "tush push" (line dance of yore), so I stay at the table with him. Well, he must have been drunk too, because he leans toward me and lays one on me. I was shocked! Stunned! And drunk, my reaction time was slow. The first kiss was over before I knew it. I looked at him. He looked at me. And he kissed me again. That's when I began to sober up pretty fast.
The kisses were very nice, don't get me wrong. But I was suddenly so ashamed of myself. I felt like I was cheating (even though the cowboy was 18 months in the past) and that didn't sit well with me. Moreover, I was mortified that I had kissed somebody from work. It is hard enough being the only female member of management in a male-dominated field without going around kissing the staff!
Later that evening, he was still drunk and I was still tipsy and stunned. Our designated driver dropped me off at home first and he walked me to the door. I'll never forget what he said. "Either you meet me at my place in an hour, or I'll be here for breakfast."
Talk about brazen.
I can't really blame it on the liquor, but an hour later I was tapping on his door. I didn't return home until noon the next day. Oh shame!
Work was interesting the next week. I wasn't sure if we had a thing developing or had just had some fun. Unfortunately, the secretaries at work had been with us at the bar and knew something was up from the way he had lingered at my door. Before long, the whole sordid tale was all over the plant. Just great.
We go out a couple of times in the next few weeks. It wasn't really dating though. He never picked me up, we'd just meet places. I went over to his place once and he came to mine once. Anyway, after 3 months of working with us he announces that he is moving back to Wisconsin. His previous employer wants him back.
So I was upset. Maybe we had potential, maybe we didn't, but now he was leaving and I'd never know. It felt sort of raw. And so began the long-distance relationship of Phoenix and the man who would become her Prince Charming.
I'd like to tell you that it was easy, but it wasn't. He sent me all sorts of confusing messages. We had difficulties getting together because we both worked crazy hours with lots of responsibility. And, when I did get up there to visit him, we'd never leave his room. Until one trip where he took me shopping for cars and informed me that he was going to build a house with his sister and her husband. That sorta made me feel like I was irrelevant.
So when I was offered a promotion a few months later, I took it and moved to Southern Illinois. Can you blame me?
Our relationship became more distant from that point on. He changed jobs and began working nights, making phone conversations almost impossible. A year passed without any visits and only a couple of short phone messages. I was ready to bail. I went on vacation with my parents to San Antonio and had a fabulous time. But on my way home from the airport, I started thinking about him.
When I got home, I wrote him a letter that basically put the ball in his court. I told him how unsatisfactory the relationship was at the time, never spending any time together and rarely speaking to each other. I told him I needed to hear from him more often or it wasn't worth it. A couple of months passed with no response from him. Finally I got the impression that he had moved on.
A couple of months later I got a phone call from him out of the blue. From that point on, we started speaking at least 4 times per week, and usually daily. We made plans to see each other and things seemed vastly improved. It was almost as though he was somebody else. I felt like asking "who are you, and what did you do with my boyfriend?" but I was afraid I wouldn't like the answer. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
In September, he called me up and said he was "in trouble." Now all the girls out there will know exactly what I imagined at these words. Somebody is pregnant. Suddenly I wasn't feeling so good. I feared the answers to questions I couldn't bring myself to ask. I asked him if he was in jail, if he needed money. No and no. He changed the subject and the conversation went on. But as he started to end the conversation I couldn't take the suspense anymore. "Aren't you going to tell me what the trouble is?" Nope.
A couple of days later, we are talking again and he asks if I'm going home (Chicago Suburbs) for my little sister's birthday. I hadn't planned on it. He suggests that we meet that weekend and go together. So we do. I meet him in our usual hotel with a splitting headache from the combined stress of driving 5 hours and fretting over what news is so awful that he must tell me in person. He's asleep when I arrive, but I wake him and before my bag is out of the car he asks me to move in with him. Okay, I say. "Well, if we're going to live together, we might as well get married too." he says. Okay, I say.
The entire time, I am preoccupied with what the bad news could be. I didn't cry or scream or do any of that girly stuff when he proposed. I kept thinking how bad it must be if this is how he softens me up. I'm sure my cautious, waiting reaction freaked him out. But I was waiting for the bad news. When I couldn't stand it anymore, I just asked "So tell me what the bad news is. What kind of trouble are you in?"
Turns out it was nothing. Some stupid thing men say when, as he puts it, they "get stupid and decide to propose." So finally I was able to relax. We moved in together 4 months later and got married the following month.
And he's been as good as I could ask for ever since. Even so, I still tease him about the proposal.
