Last year I wrote a Facebook post about my husband first realizing he loved me on August 1, 2011. We talked about that day when I called him again last week while we were at Ocean Isle Beach. We returned to our wedding venue and marveled at how quickly almost 10 years has passed.
I love to remember when we first fell in love. Every time we retell the story, I learn something new. I don’t often talk about the time we were dating but not exclusive so August 1 is the day I consider the “real” start of our relationship.
August 1 has also been the start date for morning practice for the high school boys’ soccer season for the last 11 years of our relationship. Less than a week after I took the bar exam and right before I moved into our current house was the first time I had the August-October busy season to consider. He asked me if I was ready and I never am.
This year we have the added hardship of our youngest kid starting kindergarten next week. As my husband told me last night that we don’t need to panic before there’s something to worry about, I thought back to the day I decided to call him 13 years ago.
I hadn’t seen him in over 2 weeks due to him coaching camps and I was stalking his Facebook looking for clues. It used to be much harder when there were no stories and far less real time posting. At 9 pm after spending an hour on the phone debating with my friend if we thought he was hooking up with other women in Chapel Hill while he was gone and if he didn’t want to date me anymore, she told me I needed to call because she wouldn’t talk about this anymore with me. So I called him. He told me he had been playing in a late night soccer game, but he was under 10 minutes away from my apartment. I will always remember the look on his face when I opened the door and how he immediately kissed me. When he left a few hours later, I watched the entire Bachelorette finale until 2:30 am in a somewhat stunned trance. I wrote a tweet about being glad it was August. August is still a shitshow. But I will always be thankful I made that call 13 years ago.