The Story of Us (Part 1)

Our third anniversary is on the horizon. It's close enough to start budgeting for something special to celebrate - dinner out or a weekend away - but far enough away that The Story of Us can be told in four or more parts without any of them being back-to-back (Because who wants to read all that in one go? I'm doling out bits of my life to you little by little...can you tell I'm a gradual band-aid taker-offer instead of a band-aid ripper-offer?).

It all starts with a phone call and a trip to Paris.

Neither had anything to do with Patrick.

I get feelings about things. Do you? If you do, you know what I mean. If you don't, you'll think I'm crazy. I can live with that. Sometimes, something isn't just what it seems. Sometimes a phone call isn't just a phone call.

This time, I knew there was something significant before I even knew what the significance was.

It was a voice mail - one of several left for me by educational travel consultants who somehow had my name on a list of foreign language teachers (Je parle francais, mais je ne parle pas HTML. Je ne sais pas comment faire des accents avec mon ordi portable.) and were calling me all summer hoping I'd book a trip for my students with their company. I was working as a nanny that summer, taking care of my next door neighbors' 5-month-old little girl, and when I got home at the end of the day and listened to the messages, there it was - just another cold call, but for some reason, I had the feeling that this one was different. I felt like somehow I was going to become friends with this caller.

I don't what it was that made me think he seemed particularly friendly. The Boston accent?

Of course, the logical part of my brain is especially persistent during these moments of extrasensory suspicion. I'm a scientist at heart, and if I can't use logic to describe something, my brain has a hard time accepting it. Certain that I was just being silly, I wrote off my feeling as hunger and went for the fridge.

But that night, I took out the stacks of brochures and catalogs I'd accumulated from these educational travel companies and looked through them for the trip that suited us best. That year would be my first time leading a group of high school girls to France and Spain, and as the summer was drawing to a close, that task started to feel more and more daunting.

End part one.

It's hard to believe, two kids later, that we haven't been married three years yet. I didn't date a lot, so after I turned 30, I really started to think that maybe it just wasn't going to happen. Maybe my standards were too high, or I was too set in my ways to get married.

And then, BAM! Married, new house, and two kids in two-and-a-half years' time.

We don't mess around. (Actually, we do - hence the two kids.)

So your video clip du jour is one of my faves. Before PJ started rolling over, we'd often prop him in the corner of the chair or couch if we had to go to the bathroom or run upstairs for something. This one particular day, I needed to go get my glasses upstairs and left Jack looking at a book on the floor while PJ was on the chair. I came downstairs to this: Jack had climbed up in the chair next to PJ and was showing him the book.