I am participating in the Health Activist Writers Month Challenge, in which I publish a post every day for the month of April, based on health-related prompts.
April 28 – The first time I…: Write a post about the first time you did something. What is it? What was it like? What did you learn from it?
The first time I took a man home with me on the very first date, I ended up marrying him. Not on the same day, of course – the marrying part took about ten years. But right away, I just knew that this was the man I wanted to be with forever.
The beginning of our romance had a whirlwind quality to it, much like a fairytale romance. The fairytale began the moment we first laid eyes on each other.
It was a balmy afternoon late in the summer, and I was sitting on a rock in the park trying to bring my life into perspective. I was reeling from a recent ugly breakup: the man I had been dating for six months had conveniently neglected to mention that he was married. I was feeling depressed, lonely, and utterly foolish.
Something made me look up, and I saw a man heading towards me. I had never seen him before, but he walking in my direction with purpose, as if he knew me. I wondered if he had mistaken me for someone else. He sat down beside me, gazed at me for a few seconds, and then said, “You have beautiful eyes.”
I looked at this man and saw a whole new future open up before me. We stood up, and hand in hand, we went for a walk through the park.We found ourselves on the patio of a restaurant, eating, drinking wine, and sharing our life stories with each other.
It was perfect, that first date. When I let him come home with me that night, it was simply because neither of us wanted the date to end.
Although almost eleven years have passed since that night – eleven years that have seen many trials and tribulations, many joys, the births of our two beautiful children, tons of parenting adventures and our introduction to the world of special needs parenting, and eventually, our wedding, neither of us feels that the first date ever really ended.
(Photo credit: Kirsten Doyle)
