How my husband became my husband (Part 3 of infinity)

READ PARTS ONE AND TWO BELOW.

In this part, we actually start dating, I promise. But how did that happen, exactly?

Timing.

I had just read War and Peace. This probably seems unrelated, but it’s not. Let’s just ignore what War and Peace is actually about and talk about the character of Natasha. Pre-epilogue Natasha, as the epilogue to this great book nearly made me barf. Of course Natasha is beautiful and elegant and feisty, but the genius of Natasha, the thing that really seems to attract EVERYONE to her, is her unabashed love of life and determination to enjoy it as much as possible. Everything is a great adventure and everyone is assumed to be having as good of a time as she is and she never ever doubts herself. To be fair: she is a bit childish, and this becomes a problem for her later, but the key point for this story is that her power comes from her total embracing of the beauty of life and also the charming nature of herself. No one could possibly convince her that she is not charming. Nor would anyone try.

At this point in my life, I was pretty comfortable with myself and I was just feeling quite Natasha. I was in the groove. I think everyone has these moments and it is best to take advantage of them. My roommate at the time, who is so awesome, planned a relatively chill party and I took it upon myself to make sure everyone I had flirted with of late was invited. I was in the mood to be Natasha. For good measure, I threw LCD into the invite pool. He had seemed a little extra excited to see me of late at social gatherings, so why not?

At the party, I made sure to be very friendly to everyone, but particularly the ones I had added to the invite list. Weirdly, nothing seemed awkward. I was just enjoying life and being charming. I could even introduce these people on my mental list of possible suitors to each other and feel no awkwardness. I divided my time between several people, but somehow it seemed, every time I turned a corner there was LCD again. And then we would start talking and it would suddenly seem intimate. Remembering what my brother had said, I asked him at one point, “How come we never hang out anymore?” It was supposed to be kind of a joke, because hanging out had always been rare between us. But, LCD immediately pulled out his pocket planner (which he is never without) and set up an “appointment” for us.

I know LCD particularly enjoys hanging around to a party’s end, but this one seemed different than normal. (psst. It’s because the magic fairy dust of love was descending.) He helped us do the dishes and then he proceeded to borrow my guitar and we sat down while everyone was in the other room. He taught me blues scales which I had known before but forgot. And it was like everything started to change color. Like my hiking trip in the White Mountains when the afternoon light opened a whole new view of the fall colors that was so vivid I could only think of those over-colorized old black and white movies. He touched my fingers to show me where to put them and it felt so different than anything had ever felt been between us.

So about halfway through our hanging out "appointment" the next week, I realized that it was in fact a date. He paid for me, flirted, and seemed nervous. And by the way we talked with smiles on our faces, and by the way we knew--without really saying it--that he would come in when he dropped me off (so we could keep talking--no funny business), I coudl also tell I would see him again soon.

As wonderful as that was, and as big of a crush as I had two and a half years previous, I was not immediately smitten. In fact, one of my other “prospects,” if you will, was also starting to “bite,” if you will, but he kept asking me out when I had already made plans with LCD. I didn’t know if this guy was serious or he just liked to play the game of asking me out, but I can say that he was a very cool guy and I kept hearing this Clem Snide song play in my head “because I love the unknown, I love the unknown . . .” As I had built up loads of respect for LCD over the past couple years, I did want to give it a serious shot, if warranted, but I also had to get to know the unknown or I would not stop thinking about it. So I gave him a time that I knew I would be free and we went out. It turned out this guy really was really cool. No doubt about it. And it was even a little easier to talk to him than LCD.

My first thought when the mystery guy dropped me off was, I want to call LCD. The unknown was no longer unknown and guess what? He didn’t do much for my heart. That simple. I must have had the inkling even early on of what I would become with LCD, of the fact that he would let me be sweet—I’d never gotten to be sweet with a guy before; it had always seemed so silly. Any earlier time in my life I would have attempted to date the other guy. Turns out I was never the girl for him anyway, but it was an important moment in helping me realize that my heart can actually trump my brain. And it can be wonderful.

Dating LCD was so easy for me for the first four months. This is partly because he was doing a lot of the work. I did give him a little reassurance from time to time, but he did a lot of the asking, sharing, even declaring of feelings. I told him I was just rollin' with it. Of course I liked him a lot and I was having a great time and I daydreamed about our future sometimes, but I was pretty determined to NOT overthink anything. That whole Natasha feeling had not worn off and, like hers early on, my actions were mostly effortless. LCD was more affectionate than anyone I had ever dated and after having a talk with myself and realizing that this was okay, I began to follow his lead in the affection department and I really started to like it. Eventually, somewhere around four months, I stopped just rollin' with it.

I began to ask myself whether I was in love--like really in love--and I actually didn't know at first. I liked him a lot and we seemed so compatible in so many ways. He actually got my writing, for one thing. One way we are the same is that we hate being flaky. We hate to say we're going to do something and not follow through--so we generally don't do that. Also, we're both musicians and we love it and we talk about being rock stars, but we could actually never REALLY live that lifestyle (even though LCD is probably good enough). I think now that love is simpler than I thought it was then. It's neither a checklist nor a complex of squishy passionate feelings. The day I realized I was in love with LCD, I was just driving around and thinking about how people say they belong together and how I normally resist that idea, because--you know--I'm like (brace yourselves--nerdy reference) Eowyn in LOTR and I fear a cage. But somehow the idea of me belonging with LCD seemed very natural and non-scary and I realized that was because I love him. It does not mean that we blend completely into one person, but it does mean that we are willing to have permeable membranes and we are ready to surrender our pride. After this realization, something interesting happened: things got a lot harder.

The story after this is actually even more important, but it doesn’t tell as well. It’s about work and love and how they are the same thing. There are a million beautiful memories. Like when my sweetheart first said he was falling in love with me and asked me to please do the same. Or like the time when I was about ready to give up on our relationship . . . because it was so much work and I couldn’t see the end . . . and then I went for a run during which I both cried and prayed . . . and when I got home, quite suddenly, I got a clear picture in my head of our future family—mine and his . . . as a gift, I think, to keep me going. Or months and months of us recording music in his basement room, me being continuously frustrated with how hard it seemed for me in comparison to him, and then listening to what we made together. Or when he tricked me into thinking the reason he was sweaty and stinky was due to a bad reaction to the food we had eaten while camping on the beach, when really it was because he had been carving out the words “Marry Me” in the sand. Or when we sat next to each other waiting to be called into the room where we would be married and everything we had worried about washed away and we beamed with our joy as we held each other's hands and shed a few small tears together. Or how about two days ago when I came home from grocery shopping (which I utterly loathe) for two and a half hours and when I asked my husband to help me unload the car he told me to start putting away the cold items in the fridge first and I very crankily and reluctantly agreed only to find he had bought me flowers for our quarter-anniversary (as in 1/4) . . .

This is the story that continues forever.

interlude

Installment Three is coming--as soon as I have enough time to write it. Right now I am listening to Okerrvil River and doing the dishes, which is actually a welcome change from grading papers and dealing with technological breakdowns on my way to writing a halfway decent lesson plan. In honor of my whole family, almost, who moved to Kansas City in recent times...