I don’t remember how I met Roger exactly. I don’t even really remember the exact date (in July) that he proposed to me out at Loon Lake (I have to look at date stamps on the pictures). I do remember, though, very clearly, the first time I ever heard his name.
I had only been living in Sacramento for maybe 9 months. A few months earlier, I ended a long term relationship. Even though I knew deep in my heart it was the right thing to do, I was still confused and broken hearted. At the time, I was looking for a healthy way to re-group. Actually, to be totally honest, I had just ended the rebound relationship, but I wasn’t the least bit upset about that and really just looked at it as a minor delay in my quest to get on with my new life.
I didn’t know anyone here, but I was lucky to meet a great group of people where I easily fit in and found friends. The same people, today, more than five years later, are still my best friends. I had been invited to have a sushi dinner with a group of three women. I never turn down sushi! I only knew two of them and the third, J, was meeting for the first time that night. I remember that it was July and it was a Friday night. I remember the sushi restaurant and everything we ordered. I even remember the black tank top I wore and that just a few minutes before I canceled my date with the rebound guy so I could go to this dinner. (I broke up with him permanently the next day).
We were talking about men. J once dated Roger. Actually “dated” is a loose term, considering that after an hour of listening to her talk/complain about him, I found out that they had only gone out on a few dates spanning 6 weeks and been “broken up” for just over three months. But J still had it in for him. Bad. She was saying how she couldn’t be in the same physical location as him and for that reason was not going to this Luau pool party that was the following weekend. I told her that was pretty dumb as she wasn’t hurting him, just herself, by avoiding him. He gets to have all the fun and she isolates herself from her friends….for what? I don’t think she expected someone she just met to say that to her, and she told me that I didn’t understand. Well, she was definitely right about that.
At one point, I clearly remember J saying the following to me: “You’ll meet him at the Luau. You’ll like him. Everyone likes Roger.”
I have to assume that I did meet him at the Luau…although Roger says we met at a bbq at our friend Lance’s house. I’m having a hard time with that, because I don’t think I ever went to Lance’s house until years later, I’m sure we met before then and this Luau seems to be the logical place. I sort of remember seeing him for the first time and thinking that while I understood why people liked being around him, I just didn’t get J’s obsession. But if that thought was at a Luau or a bbq or somewhere else, I just don’t know.
I have little snippets of memories of Roger in the first couple of years that I knew him. I remember that I wanted to buy a poker set and table top for my friend, Debbie’s, 30th birthday. I was looking for people that wanted to chip in to get it for her. Roger emailed me and we met up a few days later for him to give me some money to buy it.
Another time, he had organized a jazz/pool party, but by the time I decided to go, it was only an hour before the event started and it was too late to pay. I sent him an email asking if I could come anyway. It was a shot in the dark, but he called me a few minutes later and told me he had me on the list as his personal guest. I went, but don’t remember if I talked to him too much there.
There’s another time that I had met a group of people in a pub downtown. I was getting my Master’s Degree and had a paper to write, so I couldn’t stay long. I had just decided to get up and leave when Roger showed up. He had ridden his motorcycle and waltzed in with his leather jacket and helmet. I thought it was funny for some reason. As I was leaving, he asked me to stay a while. But I couldn’t. It never occurred to me that he might have liked me then.
A few weeks later, Vickie and I met different friends at a different pub downtown. It was crazy boring, but neither of us wanted to give up a night out at a bar, so we called Roger. It took him forever to actually show up. So long, we decided not to wait for him and left. He called me and begged me to come back, but I didn’t.
I already wrote the story about us white water rafting, where Roger had to save me and Vickie from the river. I never saw him the same after that weekend. I don’t know what it was exactly. Probably the idea of a man climbing a (sort of) mountain and crossing a raging river for me. And Vickie. I have to be fair.
Things changed after that. I had already been helping him decorate his new house, so we had been spending more time together, but that rafting trip changed our friendship forever. Things got weird for us. He’d call me when he was passing by my house and take me to breakfast or dinner. He would invite me just about everywhere. There came to be a point in time where I tried to avoid him a little. By then, I knew he liked me, but I was afraid to like him back. So, I stayed away.
That didn’t last long. I had to work one night, demolishing a bridge, and I was working all day too. Roger’s house was near my office and he was supposed to be out of town on a business trip. I asked him if I could go there after work and take a nap before I started the night shift. He said I could. It turned out that he wasn’t leaving until that night and when I showed up, he was still there. We had dinner and talked for a couple of hours and then I drove him to the airport. When we got there, he kissed me. Then left. Just like that. I didn’t get a nap, had to work all night and then had to wait an entire week to find out what the heck that kiss was about.
I picked him up again the following Friday and it was awkward to say the least. Eventually, the tension broke and he kissed me again. Then he asked me out and I agreed. It’s like we broke past a wall or broke whatever leash had been holding us back. The rest is history.
We had a whirlwind romance. He took me to Vegas (twice), Temecula, and skydiving. We went to Napa, Bodega Bay, and countless other places. He showered me with attention and love. He left for a two week trip to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole with his friend, Darryl. I missed him like crazy. The day he got back he told me he wanted to get married. Two weeks later, he proposed at Loon Lake, on that fuzzy day in July. We didn’t have a long engagement. Just four months. We went to Whistler, Canada on our honeymoon, and two months after that, I was pregnant with Kaelyn.
I think we surprised a lot of people with our union. Even ourselves. We are polar opposites in almost every way imaginable. But, we balance each other out. He brings out the best in me and I hope that I bring out the best in him. I have so much respect, faith and love for him, I often feel like I’ll explode with the intensity of my feelings. We have created a harmonious home, a happy baby, and united family. We’ve found things that we enjoy doing together and created little idiosyncrasies that only we understand. Sometimes, Roger says that we wasted a lot of time in the beginning. We could have started this two or three years before we did…but, timing is everything and I don’t think the timing was right back then. Sometimes, I play the “what if” game. What if I never moved here? What if I didn’t have to demolish that bridge? What if Vickie and I never sunk our boat at that rapid? Roger says it doesn’t matter, because somehow it would have turned out anyway. We’d be together. Kaelyn would be born. We’d be us.
I like that. I like our story. I love us.
No comments:
Post a Comment