Significant Dates

I can’t remember what it was I had read awhile back, but it must have had something to do with significant dates and celebrating them. Only, it must have been the kind of significant dates that most people don’t actually usually remember because I recall saying something to Mike about it like, “How on earth do people know those dates?” However, that got me to thinking, and I wondered if I could actually figure out a few dates that might be worth remembering.

I wasn’t an amazing journal keeper in college. Meaning that I recorded very little by way of detail, etc. (I know that sounds odd when I am someone who clearly likes to toss words down on paper by armfuls and truckloads); but, details were indeed often lacking. Still I was pretty good at jotting down small paragraphs a few nights each week. By looking at those I was able to come up with the following list:

Aug. 8, 1998 – First time Mike and I met
Aug. 15, 1998 – First date
May 6, 1999 – First date . . . again
Sept. 12, 1999 – Engaged
Dec. 29, 1999 – Married

Well, OK, I did already know that last one, the others though, including our engagement, I could have only guessed roughly what month it might have been. Knowing those specific dates doesn’t mean anything exactly, but it made me happy getting them down all the same, and it was fun to remember the specifics of each date as I jotted it down.

The one I thought about the most was that top date – Aug. 8, 1998. I was actually on a date with the younger brother of Mike’s good friend. Mike was there as well as it was a group date of sorts. For some reason he arrived a little late. I am sure he was feeling badly to have us all waiting, and he brushed by rather quickly to go change (as the first event of the evening was to involve floating down a river on tubes). But for some reason, something about him as he rushed by struck me as a bit cocky. I had the same slight impression later when, having missed a few of the names when introductions were initially made, I asked Mike what his name was again. He was blowing up a tube at the time and had to pause and bite the air valve while he got his name out past his tightly clenched teeth. For all the world it felt like, “What does it matter to you? I’m not your date.”

If you know Mike or have ever even met him for one second, you will know how ridiculous it is that anyone could ever make such wrong assumptions about him. But it made me smile remembering my faulty first impression as well as recalling, somewhat blushingly, the things he later told me he remembered and the impressions he made about me from that first meeting.

With it being summer time and the anniversary of that first meeting drawing close, I have been smiling a little to think thoughts along the lines of: What if, after first seeing him rush past us all in his hurry to be ready for the waiting group; or, even later, when I’d asked his name; or when we were all back at his friend’s cabin starting a movie; what if, I’d suddenly seen a moment of life 14 years from then. What if I’d seen me hugging him goodbye for work as he left in the morning. What if I’d seen our house and our yard. What if, kind of like the opposite of a life-flashing-right-before-your-eyes near death experience, I’d seen our future life flash before my eyes? Our wedding day and not being able to stop smiling despite the freezing temperatures outside of the temple where we took pictures; our first tiny little apartment, or our second, with the baby crib in a closet with removed doors. What if I’d suddenly seen a flash of us buying our first real house and putting a horse in the pasture? Us driving away from family and friends to live for an unknown amount of time in an unknown state. What if, I’d suddenly seen THIS?:

Or any of these?

Ha! Can you imagine? Would I have headed for the hills as fast as I could have? No. Obviously I would have rushed us to the altar all the quicker to put all of that in motion! And here we are now. Nearly 14 years after that first official meeting day.