True love waits

I love this picture by the lovely Kelly Ry because the back tire on this bike is completely flat. It was very funny and the bike was impossible to ride.

I had a funny random memory yesterday. I remembered my Science Fiction & Film class at BYU which I took during spring term while Matt and I were dating. We had recently gotten back together (the day after Valentine's Day actually--anniversary! just occurred to me. Nice) after about a 6-week breakup which I had been sure was "the last breakup." Of course as it turned out it was in fact "the last breakup" but in a much happier way than I had thought at the time that I was playing "Do What You Have to Do" by Sarah McLachlan on repeat and crying in the dark in my room while eating Cheetos.

So anyway after The Big and Final Reunion I decided to stay in Provo for the spring. Matt (who was living 40 miles away in Salt Lake) and I saw each other a few times a week and every weekend, staying out late every night we were together, and I showed up cheerfully late to class and to work every day.

One day I showed up to my 9:00 class at my usual 9:30ish time. It was in a tiny bomb shelter-like classroom in the basement of the JKHB, which is no more, at least not in the claustrophobic form I knew it. Anyway, I showed up and as I walked down the aisle to my seat, my professor picked up a bouquet of flowers and without skipping a beat in his lecture walked toward me, meeting me in the middle of the aisle and handing me the flowers with a big smile on his face. I guess you had to be there but this professor was hilarious and I loved him (Dr. Cutchins; if you recognize the name "JKHB" you may have had a class from him) and in my confusion I wondered if he was congratulating me for having set a record of number of times in a row being abysmally late to class.

Anyway that is a long and boring story but it was funny at the time and I am smiling at the memory. The flowers were from Matt and he had put them in the classroom before the class started. He had also left flowers on my doorstep which I had found as I left for class, and then once I arrived at work after class was over I found a flower and a Snickers bar at my work desk.

I hadn't thought about that memory in a long time. That was probably May or June or so, and before the year was up we were married. Now wrapping up our first decade together and working on 2 1/2 kids I wouldn't say it's the same as our "good old days" of going out to eat twice a week, swimming in the refreshingly cold Colony pool (or in the warm cloudy Elms pool--sick), sneaking into movie theaters with a half gallon of ice cream hidden in Matt's red sweatshirt, and finding flowers in front of me three times in the same day. But waking up and going to sleep every morning and every night next to the person I love best of all, is pretty much all I could legitimately ask for for the rest of my life.

(sad song if you listen to the lyrics. But it's Radiohead--they're all sad.)