A small love story
My funny daughter Kate’s new favorite expression is, “Try again!” She uses it whenever something we’ve told her isn’t to her liking. It may be an answer to “What’s for dinner?”, a story she’s asked us to tell or something as simple as looking for the right show on TV.
She’s also always asking us to tell her stories. Her daddy can make up great tales on the spot, but because Mama can run dry in that department, one day I told her a true story. I told her the story of when Matt and I fell in love.
It happened at a Halloween party in 2004. We’d just met a few weeks before, and being the structured, thoughtful person that I am, I was hesitant to jump in with a cannonball. I preferred to edge in, toe by toe.
We’d been on a coffee date then a real dinner date, and now a big Halloween party was looming. We decided to go together, but I was nervous. My logical brain kept telling me, “You can’t decide something this fast. You’ve only known him for a few weeks.” But the other side of my brain told me, “Oh, get over it. ‘You know when you know,’ right?”
To take some of the pressure off, I had a couple of girlfriends over at my apartment to get ready for the party. We got dressed in our costumes, and Matt came to pick me up, dressed as a fireman, complete with actual fire hat and suspendered pants. (This is the part I thought Kate would love.)
At the party, after greeting friends and taking some pictures, Matt and I made our way to the front porch that overlooked the lights of Birmingham. We stayed there for the rest of the evening. We talked about our jobs and the jobs we really wished we had. We talked about dreams we’d accomplished and those we hoped to accomplish. We talked about our family and friends and all the little things that make up a life. I realized that night that not only did our two lives mesh well, but that together, they’d make a pretty great one.
Our future was cemented sitting on that front porch surrounded by Harry Potter and Tom Cruise in his Risky Business skivvies. My edging in toe-by-toe ended pretty quickly after that date. The next month, I brought him home to Mobile with me to meet my family, and the month after that, I told my childhood best friend that I was going to marry him. Less than a year after that Halloween party, I did.
As I recounted this story to Kate over breakfast at our kitchen table, her eyes started to glaze over, as they do when I’m talking about something that doesn’t interest her. Not even the fireman costume got her going. At the end, she scrunched up her little face and asked, “But where was I?”
I told her she was still in heaven with Jesus. “But where was Sela?” Her younger sister was there, too. She thought for a moment, then began gathering her toys and climbing down from the chair.
“That’s not a good story, Mama,” she said. “Try again!”
Lauren can be reached at LaurenKDenton@gmail.com. You can also find her tweeting writerly things on Twitter @LaurenKDenton.