7 Years Ago

Wednesday October 23rd, 2002. My English roommate Melissa and I left the apartment at 6:30 p.m. dressed for fun and headed to our colleague Paula's for pizza and Pictionary. There was a good crowd, a dozen or so.
After several thin-crust wood-fired pizzas and as many bottles of red, 5 of us headed for the Old Town at 9 to experience Ladies Night at Nice's legendary anglo bar, Wayne's. Our Scottish colleague, Alan, the lone guy in the group, begged and pleaded that we make a pit stop at a pub for a beer before being subject to Ladies Night.

Us girls finally gave in. "One beer, and then we leave." The pub was deserted except for a table of people in the corner. We hunkered down in a booth across the room, ordered a round, and gibber gabbered away. After about half and hour, a guy from the other booth got up and crossed the pub to go to the toilettes. I had conjunctivitis and so was wearing my Armani glasses, so my peripheral vision was not up to snuff, but I sensed, without looking directly at him, that they guy was taller than me. A rarity in Nice. When he returned from the toilet, I got a good look at him, and decided he was cute, to boot. I made my move.

So here we are, 3 weddings (French civil, French religious, Vermont) and 2 kids later.
I think often, every year on October 23rd, what if someone had whispered in my ear that day, before the pizza and the Pictionary, "tonight you will meet your husband". Or if the whisper included all the joy, and stress, of planning 2 weddings across oceans. The thrill of watching your husband score a goal across the ice! Of the heartbreak of a honeymoon that never was. If someone had whispered: "you will do everything you can think of and you will have girls, not boys, and it will just about kill you, and then you won't care in the least." Your husband will tell you that he thinks he knows your father because of the way you lose your temper and holler, even though neither he, nor your children, will ever know your father.

If someone had said, you will start your own free-lancing business, birth 2 children in a foreign culture, one coming in 34 minutes while you are screaming in a language that is not your mother tongue. You will miss out on countless milestones of family and friends back home, events big, and small. Your heart will ache at Halloween and the 4th of July. You will love being the novelty, the foreigner. If they had told me all that, while I was getting ready with Melissa, sipping a cosmopolitan, layering on my perfume, listening to the Jackson 5, tonight, 7 years ago, I probably would have stood in amazement, not known what to think, and then put on another coat of lipstick and skipped out the door.