Weekend Wedding Update #5

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"Remember when we first met, right here?" Sheldon asked me yesterday in the school dining hall. I said, "I remember it very well, but the memory feels different. It is like a gilded leaf: the real leaf is somewhere buried under the gold, but who knows what it looks like any more after it has been covered up. We have told the story of our meeting so many times that the real memory has been replaced by the story. Does that make sense?" 

I love trying to remember that afternoon. It was the day I met my husband! I spent a lot of time in my early adulthood thinking about what that would be like, and when the day came I had no idea it was happening. For some reason that makes me so excited, like a film with an awesome story. So even though the details of Our First Meeting Story may have become slightly romanticised, I want to spend today's Weekend Wedding Update post telling it to you. (We won't say anything about the fact that we haven't really made actual planning progress since last week) 

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I went to lunch late that Friday. It was the end of September in my Freshman year. I still thought that when you ate in the dining hall it was lame to eat alone (nowadays I seek out alone time for meals). Because it was 2 o'clock very few people were there, but I spied Daniel. "Hi Daniel! Can I eat with you?" I had met Daniel a few times in the context of the missionary kid club on campus and once when he was manning a table at the school organisations fair and we talked about art. Daniel was hesitant, but allowed me to eat with him even though he was already eating with a friend and they would be leaving soon. I got my food and joined them. Daniel's friend was slender and brown haired. He had a sweet face and nice, strong hands. The two of them had been talking about art before I came to join them. So the brown haired young man continued to tell us about his favourite painting in the Art Institute. It was a landscape painting with a goat in it called The Hills of Byram. 

As he talked about his favourite goat-painting I remember being surprised with how soft-spoken he was. I don't mean that his voice was inaudible, but the way he spoke was soft and pleasant. His words were calculated and kind. He was not showy. Next to Daniel, who is vibrant, loud and full of energy, he was subtle. Of course you know that this was Sheldon. 

They had finished eating, but stayed at the table for at least an hour talking as I finished my spinach and cottage cheese. Daniel's friend made me laugh once when in the course of the conversation he forgot the word for scarf and replaced it with the word "wool noose" and a gesture to indicate something going around the neck. I was surprised that this tame young man could be slightly dark and even funny. 

Eventually I had to go make a phone call to my grandmother. I left the two of them, feeling happy to have made some new friends. But I didn't think much more about it that day. 

What I did not know is that Sheldon didn't stop thinking about our meeting. I did not know that after that first meeting he had pretty much decided to marry me. Ok. Maybe not that extreme. But from what I can gather he was pretty much in love with me after that conversation. This part of the story delights me, because of how differently we were both feeling at this time. I was like, "What a nice young man" and he was like, "I am in love!" 

Later that day I met up with Daniel again. We were waiting in line to be let into one of the legendary "House Parties". This is a thing that happens at our school every year. The people who live in campus houses create themed parties and allow other students to experience them kind of like haunted houses. The one I was in line for was Monastery themed. Daniel another friend and I were chatting as we waited to be guided by the monks through the house. Sheldon was helping stitch monk costumes. Somehow he heard I was there and he says that he began sewing frantically so that he could run out and talk to me again. He says that as a consequence the last monk cowls were not very high quality. But by the time he finished I had already left, because I had to go to a Gospel Choir retreat. SHledon arrived too late.