Oh, my love...

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For Regan, who wants to read some LOVE stories.


My darling...

My beloved and I met in college, at Ohio State. I hesitate to admit that it was journalism school because journalism is a horse of a different color these days (back then we were taught to get both sides of the story, to be unbiased, take an impartial view -- ha!), but it was in journalism school, specifically in graphics class. I was taking the class with my roommate and I didn't yet notice my beloved much, mostly because I had a girlfriend, and you know how girls are -- they stick together, making it difficult for males to infiltrate.

I think the class we shared was in spring quarter of my junior year. And I don't think I saw my beloved again until the following fall, in October. One day, a crisp, blue-skied day, as fall days in Ohio are want to be, I was standing atop a Homecoming float, one created by my sorority and a paired fraternity, making some last minute adjustments to the decorations, when I saw him walking on the pavement below me, with a camera in hand and a heavy sack of equipment slung over his shoulder. That's how he usually looked, my sweetheart, as he was a photojournalist, and my view of him was usually one half of his face with his eye closed and his mouth screwed up in intense concentration and a camera up to the other eye. That's how I saw him that day in October 1983. He was taking photos of the floats and we said "hey" and "how are you?" Nothing serious, but he was on my radar.

I called him a few months later to ask him to my sorority formal. He went, and we were soon "an item." He would show up at the sorority house front door, heavy camera sack on his shoulder, just to say "hey." He was cute, like a puppy, and I wanted to keep him.

We got to know each other over the course of that year, both of us finishing our degrees, spending time together in the journalism dark room (romantic!), both spending our days taking pictures and writing stories. We met each others' families, and I won him with baked goods -- like chocolate chip cookies and cinnamon bread (if you are a single gal, never underestimate the power of a man's tummy).

In December that year, he proposed, in the corniest way possible (and I think he will even admit it!). It was a very cold, rainy night and we had plans to see an ice show together. On the way to the show, my darling said he wanted to make a quick stop on campus. And so he parked on a campus street, and, though unhappy to get cold and wet, I went with him. He walked me down a dark, barely lit-by-streelights path toward Mirror Lake, a well-known landmark on the campus. We were alone -- no one else was crazy enough to come out on such a night, except for one man, dressed in a yellow raincoat and hat, hold a fishing pole over the edge of the lake. You would only know how funny that sight was if you know Mirror Lake. I don't even know if there were fish in the lake, but if there were, no one fished for them. My beloved sat me down on a bench --in the rain, remember -- and approached the "fisherman" (whom I later found out was his friend). The "fisherman" told him that he had fished a jar out of the lake, and my beloved it brought it over to me. It was a glass jar that we used to pass treats back and forth to each other, and inside was a small, square blue, velvet box. You can imagine the rest. I was on cloud 9 that night at the ice show, gazing at my brand new diamond sparkle in the bright lights, and later at my home where we celebrated with my family over pizza and champagne. We were married less than a year later, in the Mother of Mercy Chapel at his high school, with our family, and friends, and most importantly, God, as our witness.

Fast forward almost a quarter of decade. This fall we will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, my honey and I. Not all of it has been as pretty as a sparkling diamond ring, but it's been as strong. And you know what they say about diamonds.

Here we are, ready to leave for our fancy affair last night. My honey wore a hot pink tie because the benefit of the affair was the hospital's mobile mammography unit.




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