Photo by Ian MacLellanToday is our sixth (dating) anniversary. Stephen and I met when he was 18 and I was 19, and starting dating 7 months later. I've been thinking about that time, late April 2003, trying to remember the details.
I remember introducing Stephen to my boss at the library (a very sweet motherly person who I ended up working with for four years) during finals week. She asked, "So, will he visit you when you're studying in Santa Fe next fall?" and my mind boggled at the idea of trying to imagine something so far in the future. I had no idea what would happen. It was my first relationship.
Six Aprils ago, I was a sophomore in college. I made $5.40 an hour at my work study job. I had never been on an airplane. I had just declared a major (Studio Art) and had completed Wilderness First Responder training a month earlier. I went home for the summer, and Stephen took a cross-country trip with his friend Sam. We didn't use cell phones then, so Stephen would call my parents' house from pay phones by the highway. I wrote him letters. When we got back to campus, we started the weekly ritual of The $20 Date: $10 for Chinese food at Main Moon, $4 for an ice cream sundae at Maxwell's, and $6 for two movie tickets (student discount) at the Hamilton Theater.
The thing that stinks about moving from place to place is that it means you can no longer have all of the things you love in one spot. I'll never be able to get Greek take-out in Cambridge and go have a picnic on the green in Hamilton. I can't take a walk through Beacon Hill on a brisk spring day and then warm up with chai at the Village Tea Room in New Paltz.
But that's okay, because wherever I go, Stephen is there.
