Yesterday marked the three year anniversary of our engagement. The theme of lives together has been patience so it really is no surprise that our patience is being tested again with this new trial. We had been dating for two very loooong years when we started seriously talking about marriage. The idea of marriage had been on the table since the first week we had started dating, but it was more of a running joke between us than a reality.
From outward appearances, we were never a couple that should have been together. I was a sheltered girl fresh out of Utah who had firm opinions on who I would and would not date. I had a list a mile high of qualifications my future husband would have to meet and only wanted to date guys who fulfilled the items on the list. Willie, on the other hand, had no list and no judgements. He was easy breezy and had a "go with the flow and see where we go" kind of attitude.
We started dating so subtly, that I don't think we even knew we were together. It was 2 summers after our first meeting. We had broken off from the previous camp and joined together with a few friends to create a new camp in Vermont. I was the nutrition director and had been living in Canada with the girls hill director for most of the off season as we built the camp from the ground up. It was an exciting time in my life as I was traveling a lot and creating a nutrition program from scratch. It was the uniting of my two passions and I was elated to be part of it.
A few weeks before I went to camp I got an email from Willie. It was a casual email saying that he would see me soon at camp. I knew he was a weight lifter and wanted to get into weight lifting so I talked with the friend I was living with and we decided to create a weight lifting challenge for camp. We called it "Heav for the Beav"and made tee shirts to show our excitement in becoming a rippling mass of muscle like Willie Beavers was.
He smiled when he arrived at camp and saw us wearing our tee shirts with the sleeves rolled up to reveal our scrawny muscles. We were good students for the first few days as he instructed us on proper lifting techniques and coached us through some intense workouts. It soon became clear that weight lifting was going to take a lot more time than camp directors have to spare so the work outs faded away.
About a week before the campers were scheduled to arrive the counselors took up an impromptu game of basketball after dinner. I had just finished cleaning up the kitchen and was drying my hands on my apron as I walked over to the court to watch. I had never seen Will play basketball before and was rather impressed at how agile the bulky weight lifter was. The ball was passed to him and he jumped to shoot it. Everything moved into slow motion as he came down wrong from the shot, his foot and knee twisting with a loud "pop" as he slammed into the cement. Everyone gasped and and rushed toward him.
He seethed in pain and rolled on the cement for a moment as we tried to process what had happened. There was no professional medical help for a good 30 miles so the rest of us fell back on whatever novice medical training we had and instructed him to stay put. A car was backed on to the basketball court and he was loaded up and sent to the hospital.
It was the longest night ever as we waited for news. As I look back at it now, I must have felt something for him at that time because I was literally torn up with concern over his injury. He returned sometime in the early morning hours and the next morning I learned that he had torn something in his knee and would need to be on crutches for a few weeks.
They had moved him into the directors cabin and he was staying on a mattress in the middle of the living room floor. I was given the task of making sure was fed. I was the nutrition director, and in charge of making most of the meals and running the kitchen, so it seemed a likely task, but I was still afraid of the grizzly of a man that he was. I had yet to spend any time alone with him and I remember the feeling of anxiety I felt the first morning I delivered him breakfast.
He was laying on a mattress in the middle of a dusty cabin floor. His knee was bandaged and braced and a pair of crutches were laid carefully next him. He smiled as I handed him a plate with a meager breakfast of a toasted bagel with cream cheese. He must have been starving because he tore into the meal as if he hadn't eaten in days.
I stood awkwardly at the door, feeling uncomfortable for no particular reason. I was slowly backing out the screen door when he noticed and stopped me.
"Sit down for a minute!" he said.
I sat.
He ate.
There were no words.
When he finished he handed me the plate and thanked me and I rushed out of the cabin.
We repeated the scene at lunch, then dinner and by the next day he had me sitting on the edge of the bed while I waited for him to finish. A few meals after that we began sharing some casual conversation during meals and by the 5th day in I was bringing work in with me and staying for a lot longer than it took him to eat. I found it was the only place on camp I could be in silence and get some work done!
I was seeing him 3 times a day for meals and random other times when he would call me on the walkie talkie for a snack. I considered myself to be his room service. He considered me to be more.
My first inclination came toward the end of his recovery. He was now in his own cabin and was able to walk without crutches. We had decided it would be the last meal I would need to bring to his room and we shared some friendly conversation as he ate. I was no longer bringing work with me, but spending the time talking to him and learning more about the secretive Willie Beavers.
He was captivating.
Curious.
A puzzle that I needed to solve.
But not in a romantic way. Not for this girl. He was not anywhere near the type of person I thought I should be with so I wasn't looking at him in any sort of romantic way.
That night he finished his dinner and handed me the plate.
"You'll have to bring me dinner now to make this up to me!" I said with a laugh.
"Don't you worry," he said "I've already planned to take you out to dinner to thank you."
My heart skipped a beat. Was this a date proposal?
I felt the blood rush to my face and hurried to leave before he saw my embarrassed rosy cheeks.
What was I going to do? I couldn't have a guy like him like me! He wasn't even in my category of marriage worthy guys so I didn't even want to lead him on by dating him. I had to admit that he was attractive and intriguing, but I was after marriage and dating only those I planned to marry was my plan. Therefore, he was out!
In retrospect, I was ridiculous! What was one dinner date going to do?
That first dinner date was unlike any other date I had been on. My previous dates had felt more like job interviews where I was grilled to find out where I ranked in a sea of other available girls. By the end of those dates I would learn whether my answers had qualified me for another date, or whether I had to begin the interview process again with another guy. This was the dating culture I came from and all I knew of dating, but this date was totally different. Will didn't seem to have an agenda. The conversation was easy and directionless. I didn't have to qualify for anything. I just had to be me.
I remember coming back to camp after that date and feeling like I had been hanging out with a friend. There was no anxiety about whether I had said the right thing or concern about whether he was going to ask me about again. It was easy breezy. Just like Will.
With Will back on his feet I had no need to see him 3 times a day. I was constantly busy with my role at the camp so the days flew by without any thought of taking him the meals that had once filled my time. My days began at 5AM and ended with me running raged around 1AM. I was a walking zombie. As soon as I laid on my inflatable mattress each night I was done. Nothing could wake me.
One night, about a week after first date I was startled awake. Someone was in my room. We lived in a communal cabin with nothing but a simple latch on each door so it wasn't hard to enter a room, but no one had ever come into mine. I struggled to calm my heart and pull my thoughts together as I asked who it was.
The room was dark and my visitor took a seat on my bed.
It was Willie.
"What are you doing?" I asked him, in surprised.
"Just wondering what you're doing." He said as if it were a totally normal thing to say to someone at 3AM when you have woken from from sleep and can obviously see what they were doing.
"I'm sleeping." I said and laid back down.
He sat for a minute longer and we exchanged a sleepy conversation as I drifted back asleep.
"I'm going to marry you!" he said matter of factly.
"Mmmhmmm" I mumbled from my sleeping state.
"Ok then." he said. I don't know how long he stayed after that. I was too tired to be polite and show him out. All I remember is waking up the next morning and wondering if I had dreamt it up.
Obviously I didn't because he did marry me, just like he said.
Two years after that event we were a completely different couple. We had tried the long distance dating thing for a while with me living in Utah and him in California. That wasn't working so I moved to Sacramento. That was still too far so I finally moved to Chico. We were happy and had been discussing marriage. In the fall of 2008 I started to drop subtle hints about the type of ring I would like. He was always preoccupied when these conversations came up so I didn't push it. I lived near a Mervyn's and saw a ring there that I fell in love with. It was an antique ring with a square cut diamond in the middle and accent diamonds on both bands. I reminded me of the grandma's ring and I was instantly in love with it. The only problem was it was way out of our price range, costing near $3000.
Over the course of the following months, Mervyn's announced it was going out of business and began discounting the ring. I showed it to Will during a shopping trip there and he didn't seem interested. Another month went by and the ring was discounted again. Finally it was the last day that the store was ever going to be opened and the ring was still there. I felt it was a sign that we needed to get it!
We had to drive to Willows that night and back to Chico which is an hour and a half trip and we made it just before the store closed. There was a couple looking at the ring when we got to the counter and I wanted to tackle them and take it away. Thankfully, they decided they didn't want it and we snatched it up. With all the discounts we ended up getting it for $500 which is a steal of a deal by any standards.
It was nearing Christmas and I had dreams of a Christmas engagement, but anyone who knows Willie, knows that he can not be rushed into anything. I may possibly be the most impatient person in the entire world so it was extremely trying on me to wait for him to propose. Weeks turned to months and he still hadn't given me the ring. We were planning a wedding for September 5, 2009. We had reserved a wedding chapel in Las Vegas and had the invitations printed up for delivery.
It was June 8, 2009 and we were about to send out invitations to a wedding that had not even been proposed to the bride yet! I told him that night that I wanted to have the ring so when people got the invitation and asked about the ring that I could show them! I am so needy!
I also told him I wanted to be surprised. It was quite the lofty request, I wanted the ring, but I wanted to be surprised.
He managed to pull it off and surprised me the next morning when he asked me to marry him and finally presented me with that beautiful ring. That was June 9, 2009, three years ago from yesterday. Three years of hanging out with my best friend.
Looking back, it's amazing to note how our friendship has changed and continues to change. I thought I loved him when I married him, but I can see now that I didn't understand that complete debts of love. I am fascinated by how endless my capacity to love this man is. This kind of love is a gift and I'm grateful to have it.
Willie had a good day today. We had a music date and listened to a western band named "The Saddle Cats" that played in the atrium. It was a good time complete with cowboy hats and yodelling. We are still on kitchen boycott so I went out and got Chinese food for dinner which was good, but Willie said it was no Fu Hing which is the Chinese restaurant in Willows.
We'll have Fu Hing again soon. Those crab and cheese won tons will never know what hit them when Willie gets home!
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