Romance by the Dozen

I've been keeping up on this blog since 2004, which means I've written a special post for our anniversary for the past eight years. This year The Day -- yesterday -- went by without my posting anything. I wondered, what more is there to say? We met, we fell in love, we got married, we have kids, we're still madly in love...

Tonight, however, I had a captive audience: I was driving our babysitter Vanessa home. And I spent nearly the entire trip telling her about the sweet romantic events of my and Darren's courtship. Then I thought, Hey! Not all our friends have heard all these! I mean, I've posted our entire courtship story before, but these are like bonus tracks. Deleted scenes. Special director's cut.

So here you go. This year's Special Anniversary Post. In honor of our 12th year, I'm going to try for a dozen stories. If it seems like a bit much, Vanessa probably can offer sympathy and counseling.

1. Darren first thought of me as wife material the day that I walked into his office, slapped a trivia card on his desk, announced, "Thought you'd like this," and walked back out. The card had all the answers on the back whited-out. (My sister had sent it to me. Logically, he ought to have thought of her as wife material, not me, but I was the lucky one.)

2. I first thought of Darren as husband material when I found out that he'd read Pride and Prejudice and had seen the A&E adaptation of it. Six hours of Jane Austen. You don't take that lightly.

3. I didn't want Darren to be interested in me. I certainly wasn't interested in him. But after I left Virginia and moved home to Mississippi, I couldn't escape reminders of him. The postman who delivered mail at the newspaper office where I worked sounded like Darren. Somebody else drove a battered silver hatchback like Darren. I kept coming across references to Canadians, and finding bits of information and trivia that I knew he'd like. I found that I knew a lot about him, and he kept coming up in my conversation. It was all extremely annoying.

4. He sent me a book for Christmas the year we met. I was not happy. I wrote back and thanked him, then added that if he sent along any "intentions" with the gift, then I was going to send it back. He assured me that there were "no intentions expressed or implied." He'd seen it and thought I'd like it. (I didn't send it back.)

5. It certainly wasn't as if he'd made a special trip to a bookstore forty minutes away to buy the book for me.

6. I'll assume that my forthrightness was part of my charm. I know my dimples were.

7. Darren ran the HSLDA table at two Mississippi homeschool conferences. "Oh!" I wrote him. "What a nice coincidence. I'll stop by your table." What I found out later was that both years, Darren cornered the conference coordinator at the office and told her, "I want the Mississippi conference."

8. My mom met Darren at one of these conferences. They shook hands and made small talk for a few minutes. She marked him down as "one to watch" after that. I asked her later, "Why did you even suspect him? Y'all didn't talk about anything important." She replied, "He was nervous meeting me."

9. He prayed for me every night for two years. He prayed that if I was the one God intended for him to marry, that He would keep other guys away from me until Darren could make a move.

10. I was extremely frustrated during those two years that no one, not even scoundrels and cads, expressed any romantic interest in me.

11. During a long, meandering conversation about romance and marriage and husbands, I said to my friend Dana, "Isn't it strange to think that there's this one person is going to be the most important person in my life, and I haven't even met him yet!" And a name floated to the top of my mind. I was puzzled. Why was he stuck in my head like that?

12. Skipping ahead, Darren proposed to me on my front porch in Mississippi on June 2. He originally intended to propose to me in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia a month later. In a cemetery. There's a story behind this, of course.

A year previously, I'd gone back to Virginia to visit my friends Leah and Rose. We were taking a trip to Harper's Ferry and invited any friends to join us. Darren took us up on it -- what a good friend! (Said I. I spent a long time during this trip explaining to Leah and Rose why Darren and I were very good friends but certainly nothing more than that, despite any appearances to the contrary. Like coming on a day trip with us.) At Harper's Ferry, we all walked up to the cemetery. This is the part of the story where Sara comes out and acts like an idiot.

My maiden name is Roberts. A good name, granted, but not exciting. I figured I had one shot at improving my signature, and that was marriage. So I was always picking out last names I liked. This afternoon in Harper's Ferry, in the cemetery, I announced that I was in the market for an interesting last name, and proceeded to find some for myself off the tombstones.

Darren helped me. He found several promising candidates.

Four months later when he wrote to ask to court me, I remembered that afternoon. And just about died of embarrassment. He confessed that he thought it was funny. He enjoyed picking out names for me, even though he had a very definite opinion as to what a suitable new name for me would be.

This, by the way, is where the audience realizes the name I married into, and laughs at me.

That's a dozen stories about the sweet romance that became our marriage. I'd write more, but why write when I could be snuggling with Darren Jones? (Myself of thirteen years ago say, "Whoa, what? No, we're just good friends! No snuggling!" But deep down, I think she really wouldn't have minded too much.)

Happy 12th anniversary, my wonderful love!

-- SJ