10 years, but who's counting?

don’t start something if you can’t finish it

Five months into our relationship, we were over at Emily’s sister’s house for dinner. After a meal and small talk, they roped us in to playing a silly game where you try to get your team to say a word without saying anything remotely related to it (Catchphrase, maybe?). We went back and forth a few rounds, and then I drew “riot”, which seemed like an easy out since Emily was a big Beastie Boys fan and I knew that they had a couple songs I could use. But when I started the timer, my mind snagged on the lyrics for Sabotage. Finally after mumbling about LA and breaking store windows, in desperation, I said, “Let’s start a …” and Emily answered “family?”

long odds

The first time we went out: it was a setup group date and Emily was still reeling from an ugly breakup and didn’t want anything to do with it. But there we were, at a sketchy laser tag place hanging out at a sketchier arcade, playing air hockey while waiting for our group leader to decide if the date needed to go on any longer. Emily was really quiet but not shy. As I remember, she was wearing no make-up, brown corduroys, a green v-neck T-shirt that had laces up the front like a shoe. And doc marten molly browns. I had never met a girl that dressed like that to a first date. The group decided to end the evening early and I asked Emily if she wanted to come over and watch a movie, no pressure, and for some reason she said yes. When my dad found out that her birthday was December 16^th, the same day as his, he said the stars had aligned.

if you find someone good, hold tight

I picked up the ring on a trip back from Montana and the first person I told was my grandmother, Anita Raymond. She wanted to know when I was going to propose. I was packing up my apartment and flying to Boston the next day and Emily was staying behind in Provo to run the rest of the track season, so I figured I had a couple of months to plan things out. Grandma Raymond just said that I’d better put a ring on her finger before I left or else she might not be around when I got back from Boston. So I called one of my friends and asked him to buy the biggest bouquet of roses he could find and leave it on a table in the corner of a bookstore. After reading a few pages of Anna Karenina we hiked up the canyon and on moonless night about 9:30 pm, I got out down on one knee, opened the ring box, and dropped the ring in the long grass.

running smart

The most recent marathon Emily ran was Boston 2012, it was 90 degrees and so sunny that I took Phoebe and Bruce to the fire hydrant that someone had compassionately turned on at the side of the course. I was really worried that Emily would try to run her fastest race, and as the first runners came staggering by looking dry and spent, it only made me worry more. Finally I saw her in the growing crowd of runners: she was smiling,  sunglasses on, sucking on a popsicle and weaving around all the people that were dropping out. She didn’t look tired at all.