Whenever someone asks me how I met my wife Beth I usually give the standard to-the-point ultra-brief guy answer: “at church.” While I won’t go into the detail Beth would which includes several parenthetical asides and way more paragraphs than the Daily Republic allows, here’s the story of how I met the woman who won my heart.
I noticed Beth at my church in December of 1993 and thought she was cute and smart. I had gone through a major change in becoming a Christian and was not looking for a relationship, but wanted to work on myself. I was determined not to be a Sunday-Wednesday night Christian as I had done when I was a teenager, but wanted to live my life by spiritual principles.
One of those principles was honesty. I liked Beth for months and there were a couple of times when she was stressed out from dealing with the second graders she taught and asked for prayers from the church. I was tempted to comfort her as a “loving Christian brother” but didn’t because I knew I was carrying the ulterior motive of wanting her to like me.
Finally I heard she was moving to a different state to accept a teaching position and so I confided to a mutual friend that I liked her knowing he would relay it to her. It was a little junior high-ish in retrospect, but it worked. Beth and I really talked for the first time at a youth function we both worked at and I agreed to come the following Tuesday and help her grade papers.
We talked for a long time that day and I was determined that she not place me in the dreaded “Friend” box. I mean, I knew from past experience that once you get stuck in that box there is no escape.
The following Saturday we had a breakfast at church and afterwards Beth and I went to Lake Berryessa and talked and talked. That was the thing that impressed me the most—how easy she was to talk to.
Nothing is real to me unless I can compare it to a movie and this paraphrased quote from “Sleepless in Seattle” is most apropos: “It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, meant we were supposed to be together. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home... only to no home I'd ever known. I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew. It was like... magic.”
We had our first kiss that night and soon were having long telephone calls about everything under the sun. She eschewed the teaching job and stayed here because of me. I usually exaggerate and say she gave up a tenured position at Harvard to make the story better, but the best part was that she stayed.
We were married by John Gibson, an elder from my church, at my brother Orvis and Patty’s home in Suisun City. Many of the pictures of me reciting my vows aren’t that good because I was crying grateful, joyous tears and could barely get through it.
Beth and I celebrate 16 years of marriage this Wednesday and I have learned so much about commitment. The initial infatuation of falling in love was exhilarating and dizzying but simply couldn’t be sustained. I mean, I was so gaga I could barely function. As time goes on our love has deepened and matured.
I love the scene in “Good Will Hunting” when Robin Williams tells Matt Damon his late wife used to have flatulence and one night a particularly loud blast woke herself and their dog.
“She’s been dead for 2 years, and that's the [stuff] I remember: wonderful stuff you know? The little idiosyncrasies that only I know about: that's what made her my wife. Oh she had the goods on me too; she knew all my little peccadilloes. People call these things imperfections, but they’re not. Ah, that's the good stuff.”
I am certainly not perfect and neither is my wife, but we are perfect for each other. Happy Anniversary Beth.
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