White (Diamond)

Five years ago today, there was a great culmination in the works.

I had been faithfully dating my future husband for several weeks. I'd been completely into him for about a month, after we clicked so definitely on our fourth date by Bouldin Creek in early April. A week after Bouldin Creek we had another wonderful date. We got dressed up (I even surprised him with contact lenses and a new hairstyle), we ate Greek food downtown, and we walked to the Capitol for an after-dark tour. I'd never even been inside, but my husband practically had the official tour memorized from so many childhood trips. He held my hand and showed me around, sneaking in kisses here and there, and then I drove him to his house and sneaked in a few more. We had a marvelous time, and we were fabulously into one another. But this is not the culmination I'm talking about.

A couple weeks after our date to the Capitol my future husband got on a plane bound for London, for a pleasure trip he'd spent months planning. I was in for about ten days of the old fondness-growing-through-absence treatment. Just when things were getting really good, he left the country. For the next week and a half or so, I heard from him through the occasional phone call. I heard about the museums he was visiting, the restaurants he was trying, the pictures he was taking, and the famous landmark he defaced with my name + his. He carried a picture of me in his pocket the whole time, so there are even a few pictures of "me" visiting famous London sights. But the best night was when he called me after a long evening of pub-crawling and drunkenly professed his love for me. It wasn't his intention to tell me he loved me for the first time over a trans-Atlantic phone call, but there it was. All I could do was return the favor, hope he remembered it the next morning, and wait patiently for his return, still a few days away . . .