On this day 50 years ago, two of the most amazing people I have ever known joined in wedded bliss. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.
My grandparents are about as night and day as it gets. My Granddad, who was raised in a small, west Texas town, is a quiet and conservative man who has one of the corniest senses of humor ever. He knows how to fix just about everything under the sun and, despite living with diabetes and undergoing both triple bypass AND hip surgery, still mows his own lawn and builds his own toolsheds. He has shown me, by countless example, what a solid work ethic looks like, and for that I will be forever grateful. My Nan, who was raised in Pennsylvania and grew up in New Jersey, is a self-proclaimed “Left handed Yankee Catholic Democrat”. She is outgoing, outspoken, and has helped teach me to value others’ sometimes differing opinions while sticking to my own guns.
My nan often jokes that if she and my granddad can make it to 50 years that everybody should be able to find peace with each other. I’m glad they stuck it out through everything, though, because they are a testament to what love and a little hard work can create. And, I mean. They eventually got me out of the whole thing, so it’s a win-win all around.
Happy GOLDEN anniversary to you, Nanny & Granddad! You are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the best grandparents a girl could ask for. Love you both so very much. ♥
Nope, I don’t like this guy at all.
Not at all.
A Lesson In Love.
When I was fifteen, I met a boy. We’ll call him B. I met this boy on the Internet. A cheesy flirty dating site to be specific, but that’s not important (are we really surprised, though?). What is important is that from the moment we began talking I knew there was some kind of connection between us. Little did I know just how strong, and in what capacity, that connection would actually be.
Things started off flirtatious between us. He thought I was cute, I thought he was cute. But he lived about 5.5 hours from me in Nowhere, Texas, and since I was just fifteen at the time (he was seventeen) there was no way I’d be seeing him anytime soon. But despite all that, things moved pretty fast (as most young “relationships” do), and soon we were talking at every free moment, saying we loved each other, etc. The whole nine yards.
About 8 months after we met, B got a girlfriend. Since we had never staked a claim on each other, he was well within his right to do so, but that didn’t lessen the sting of going from talking all the time to barely speaking. We grew distant; he dove in head first to his new relationship and I enjoyed my sophomore year of high school. Once things started to turn sour with his girlfriend, B would call me up and tell me about it. Being the kind of person I am, I sat and listened, sometimes advising him on how to handle the situation or what to do. And we’d hang up, and I wouldn’t hear from him again until the next problem arose.
That’s not to say I hung around waiting for his calls or anything. *I* dove head first into my own “real” relationship, one which lasted about a year. When that ended, I was back to being B’s single friend who listened to all of the problems. I nailed this role. And because I was so good at it, I grew comfortable in it. (So comfortable that it continued for the next couple years, but I digress).
And then we met. B was in my town for work. I was a senior in high school, he a couple years out of HS. I’ll spare you all the painstaking details, but what you should know is that after MUCH persistence, I let him know where I was so he could come see me. So he did. And he kissed me. And proceeded to leave the salon, only to not speak to me for four months. It turns out he was still seeing his now on-again-off-again girlfriend. To say I was crushed would be the understatement of the year, but for all intents and purposes…yeah. I was crushed.
Over the next year, our relationship was all over the place. We would go from speaking to not speaking to talking about our feelings for each other to not speaking to speaking…you get it. Mind you, I’m now entering my freshman year of college (2007-2008), so I’m going through my own transition period. One night we were talking on the phone, and he gave me the rawest, most sincere apology he’d ever given me. He said he was sorry for all the times he’d given me false hope and then stopped speaking to me. He apologized for the kiss. He swore up, down, and sideways that he would never again treat me like his backup girl. And, for the most part, he has honored that.
We grew into a very strong friendship; we still spoke as frequently but it was about things like the world. And our lives. He became my best friend, and I his, and it was good that way. We were very protective of each other. He dated girls off and on, and I silently started gaining a lot of weight/becoming unhappy, but when we talked none of that mattered. It was just us.
Because of that solid bond and constant communication, of course some feelings always lingered there for B. I never completely rid myself of them, but allowed myself to like other guys because I knew the distance wasn’t feasible. It didn’t help that while this solid bond was building, he always told me he loved me and wished things would eventually work out for us.
Fast forward to January 2011. I get a phone call from B.
B: “Hey. So I have some exciting news!”
J: “Oh yeah?! What’s that?”
B: “…you’re gonna be an aunt!”
Wait, what? I felt a knot forming in my stomach. I was devastated. I couldn’t even feign happiness or excitement for him, I was pissed. Like, straight up mad. How could he do this? How could he be irresponsible like that? Not even a month ago, he’d told me about how this girl “would never be me”, and I had eaten the words out of the palm of his hand. I later apologized to him for being irrational on the phone, but I openly told him that I wasn’t going to pretend to be excited about something I wasn’t. I was hurt, and now that I look back on it, it was mostly for selfish reasons. I knew that by him becoming a father, a lot of things were going to end for us. Things I wasn’t ready to let go of.
But the months went on, and I found myself growing less upset and bitter about the situation. Of course, things were already changing. We were talking significantly less. But I was making positive changes in my life, getting healthier and happier, and I have no doubt that those things contributed to my ability to start letting things go with B. At least romantically.
As the due date of B’s baby drew nearer, I found myself asking him questions like, “are you excited?” or “are you nervous?”, genuinely wanting to know the answers. We talked about his fears of becoming a father, his nerves/anxiety/excitement. I was happy for him. And, eventually, I wasn’t faking it.
This past Sunday morning, I woke up with a missed call from B. I knew. I excitedly called him back, and he answered with the same “hey” that he always does. He asked me how I was doing, but I skipped the formalities and asked him what was going on.
“I became a dad today, Jessica.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. After all we had been through, the (what seemed like) millions of ups and downs, here we were in this moment: him - calling me to tell me about his perfect baby boy, and me - feeling nothing but overwhelming joy for him. It was like I couldn’t even FATHOM a reason to feel mad, or hurt, or sad. My heart was bursting at the seams with all these rad emotions, all of them being positive. When he said “I couldn’t ask for anything more in my life”, I did not immediately get upset that I couldn’t make his life perfect anymore. It was in THAT exact moment that I knew I had finally let it all go. The romantic feelings, the bitterness, everything. B really was my best friend, and I was rejoicing with him.
It was also in that moment that I realized two other things: 1) That I truly loved B, and 2) That I was ABLE to love somebody purely without any dramatics or insecurities. It was a really big moment for me. One that I had never experienced prior to Sunday.
It’s called growing up, my friends. And while sometimes that comes with really hard lessons, oftentimes it comes with really AWESOME ones. About love. About life. About how to deal. Those awesome lessons make the hard ones so much easier to bear. I don’t think there’s any coincidence to that.
There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they’re good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn’t mean you’ll be together forever. It doesn’t mean you won’t hurt each other. It just means you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.
<333
(Source: Flickr / david_vanoost, via ratherbebarefoot)
OK, people. This is the story on American Idol that I was talking about just a minute ago. The story that is FAR too beautiful not to share!
Chris Medina, you are the epitome of a real man.
P.S. If you tend to fall on the emotional side, I highly recommend Kleenex.
