Love's Little Adventures

It's not quite St. Valentine's yet, but close enough for this to be appropriate--of course, it's also my blog and whatever I want is appropriate.

In Your Town Monthly--a local magazine--they were having a Valentine's essay contest. I don't have the prompt in front of me any more, but basically it was to describe in 500 words or less the most romantic night you've had with your Valentine. It took a little while for me to think of something that wouldn't be too cheesy. Let's face it, we're cheesy, and cheese seems even cheesier when it's written down. I finally settled on our first "date" which was accidental, actually, and not at all romantic really--not in the traditional sense at least. But I decided it would be good practice to take a different look at romance and I really needed to submit something to this contest since it's one of my resolutions. Anyway, I didn't win, but I was a finalist. You can see it on the magazine's Facebook page here, along with the other finalists (different page for the winner). Or you can just read it below!

Mike and me in Arizona, November 2007.

Love's Little Adventures

On our first date, Mike took me to a sandbar on the Snake River for a nighttime swim. The river was beautiful, and because we were in a very small town with very few lights the stars shone brightly enough to reflect off the stillest parts of the river. We sat on a small wooden dock that just peeked over the water. I wasn’t particularly keen on jumping in; despite the warmth of the summer night, I knew the water was going to be frigid. Mike, however, dove in without delay.

“Whoo!” he shouted as he bobbed back up. “C’mon! It’s awesome!” He worked hard to convince me. “What if I threw you in?” I don’t know what it is with men and the idea that throwing a woman into a freezing body of water will attract her to him more, but it seems like a common notion.

“If you threw me into that water, I would steal your dry clothes and drive back home.” I wasn’t joking either—I would have. He agreed not to force me in; with this assurance, I jumped in on my own. As I went down under the water, the cold enveloped me until I was so numb it almost felt warm. When I came back up for air I could barely breathe from the pounding of my heart to warm me up. It was exhilarating to be out in the cold river with the stars and moon over me, and I could see why Mike had shouted. I paddled around for a few minutes before climbing back onto the dock. Mike congratulated me and laughed when I could barely respond. The cold had made all my senses clearer—his laugh filled the whole space around us, and it made me laugh, too. I wrapped up in my towel and looked on as Mike took one last dip in the water before we gathered out things and climbed the small hill back to the car.

The cold clarity helped me see something that night I would see again and again over our year of dating: Mike’s knack for creating adventure in an otherwise mundane life. That is romance. The next summer we were married in the beautiful city of Boston, and in two and a half years of marriage he has kept the romance coming. Even with our seventeen-month-old daughter he has kept up the practice of taking me on his little adventures.