June 1st is coming up … that would be hubby’s and mine fifth wedding anniversary. Seems just like yesterday and also so long ago. Just like yesterday because I remember the day quite well and so long ago because I can see quite a few more wrinkles on my face now. We are likely going to make it a low-key celebration again given that we aren’t planning to leave Sophia and have had bigger celebrations in the past.
For our first anniversary, we went to Rome, the Positano Coast and Sicily. For our second, we went to Japan. Charleston and its glory welcomed the pregnant us for our third anniversary and I am pretty sure our fourth was spent at home trying to get sleep since we never do anymore.
But this post is really about what led to all these anniversaries. This post is about how we met in the summer of 2001 (12 years ago… wowza). Hubby was about to enter Drexel University as a Freshman. He had secured a research position in the same lab I had been working in. I had already been at Drexel a year at that point. Anyway… it just so happened that our research advisor at the time decided to send us and a few other students to a conference in Bologna, Italy for a week. Now, I ask you, who wouldn’t jump at that opportunity and take another week or two to sightsee? I know I did.
I remember arriving at the Philadelphia International Airport with my parents in tow. They insisted on dropping me off AND taking a look at these other students that were going. My parents are fairly protective and I like that. My mom takes a look at hubby, walks over to me and asks me who he is. I admit that its just another student and I don’t know much about him. She declares that he seems like a nice guy and that I should go out with him. Jewish mothers have some sort of a jew-[ra]dar — especially when their daughters are unmarried. Keep in mind now, that I was at that time seeing someone else. Thanks, MOM! That suggestion sped into my one ear and was kicked out instantaneously. Dating one person is hard enough… I never aspired to multitask in that department.
We ended up traveling to Florence and Venice and riding around in the hills of Tuscany together. Our trip was plutonic (hubby was seeing someone, too) but plenty of fun. I learned a lot about him and then our trip came to an end. That was that… until a few months later when he asked me out when neither of us were seeing anyone. The rest is … well as they say, History.
I’ll always have a warm place for Bologna not just because it shows old Westerns on an enormous screen in the evenings at the main plaza, but because it was a place where I found a new friend who eventually became my partner for life.
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