Saturday, June 20, 2009

Happy Anniversary






Daily Specs:

Attainable Goal: Make Father's Day presents. I really must do this today, seeing as tomorrow is Father's Day.
Grievance: None yet
Celebration: Today is my 1st anniversary.

I have been married for one year today. It is phenomenal how quickly a year can fly by. When I look back, however, so much has happened in the last year that I could probably account for all 365 days if I needed to.

Big Love and I got married under some rather interesting circumstances. For those of you that know this story, sorry. I am telling it again. Last year at this time, Boy Love and I were residing in a teeny studio apartment in Atlanta. I had moved there in September of 2007 to get my first out-of-college job in a theatre department at a high-falutin' private school. Big Love and I had met in the spring of '07, when I got a job as a bartender in the restaurant he was managing. After I moved to Atlanta 5 months later, we kept in touch via Myspace messages (yes, Myspace has played a significant role in my life. Sad as that may sound). By the time Christmas of '07 rolled around, we were in a long-distance love affair, and were about to re-meet face to face when I came home for the holidays. When Boy Love and I went over to his house for the first time after arriving in Portland for the holidays, I was a little nervous. I had not physically seen Big Love in any sort of situation besides at the restaurant. However, when he came to the door, we had one of those Hollywood kisses and my nerves were calmed. Big Love swears that when we were kissing our first kiss that I dropped Boy Love out of my arms, but I will contest to my grave that I set him down on the ground with the gentleness of a butterfly. By the time I left Portland in January to return to my apartment in Atlanta, the two of us had professed our love for each other, and he began to find ways to move back down south. By March, he had procured a job at a local restaurant and an apartment.

Big Love had lived in the south before. He attended college in Nashville and worked for one restaurant group the whole time he was there. He developed life long relationships with the owner ad his family, and was loved very much by them. When he moved to Atlanta to be around Boy Love and myself, he was in somewhat familiar territory. During his stint in Nashville, he had been to Atlanta a few times, and he knew what to expect in the area. What he did NOT expect, however, was a phone call in early June from his old employers saying they wanted to meet up with him. They were going to be in Atlanta checking out some restaurants and they wanted to meet up. Big Love was excited about this, but had a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that this was more than a friendly meeting.

He was right. Big Love was offered a job from his previous employers. They wanted him to be the general manager and kitchen manager of the restaurant that they owned in Birmingham. This was an amazing opportunity for Big, not only because he could once again work for his friends, but because he would make enough money to support a family. The only real downfall was that the job was in Birmingham, which meant another move. And since Big Love had just moved all the way across the country to be with Boy and I not 4 months earlier, there was no way he was about to move away from us now. That only meant one thing: we were going with him. Us going with him meant we had to make a decision, do we get separate places? Do we live together? Well living together was the only thing that made sense, financially speaking. I would not be working and could not afford to support myself and Boy. We didn't necessarily want to "shack up", so that left only one option. We decided to get married.

In accepting this job, he needed to begin training almost immediately. We had two weeks to get our affairs in order. That included getting married. Big Love came to my apartment a few nights later, Sharpie pen in hand, and proposed. He drew a pen mark around my ring finger, and I drew one around his. We had decided to get tattoos instead of rings, so the Sharpie would have to do for a couple weeks.

On the 20th of June, we went straight from our respective jobs (his at the Atlanta restaurant, mine at the summer camp at school) and went to the office of our church minister. He married us right then and there, in his office, with my parents on speakerphone. It was perfect. Boy Love was at the sitters for the night and all the next day, so Big Love and I high-tailed it to Birmingham for our wedding night. The one day of our honeymoon we spent in Birmingham finding an apartment, only to return to Atlanta in the evening. We picked up Boy Love from the sitter's house and went to get our "wedding rings". We were officially married.

And that is just the story of us getting married. Chaos continued to ensue after that...new jobs, moving to Birmingham, and a (very swift) conception of Baby Love, but that is a whole different story...

Happy Anniversary, to you, Big Love. You are a perfect, God fearing man, and I will love you forever and always.

2 comments:

  1. it has been a perfect year...if not for any other reason that I have struggled, enjoyed, and grown in life with you by my side. I love everything about you...even the stuff I don't like so much. Thank you for this; thank you for our family; thank you for everything you give/do for me/us!

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  2. im such a sucker for your guys' story. it gets me every time... even though you left out the part where i heard about "sexy manager ben" for like 5 months while you worked at gustavs and he had no idea you were already like in love with him

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