The post where I talk about a decade of love...

On January 7th, 2004 a rusted up, shitty Chevy S10 pickup rumbled up the driveway at good ol' 10320 Freeman Rd.  It was the day before my 18th birthday and this guy I liked had come to take me out to dinner and a movie. I had my hair in two braids (more like a seven year old than a seventeen year old but whatever..it was my style), had on a black turtleneck sweater with sewn on patches (very Avril Lavigne), baggy wide leg jeans (I could literally put both legs in one leg on those. I LOVED those pants), my lucky socks (the ones with the frogs on them that I wore under a pair of white socks at every single band competition through high school) and black Vans skater shoes. I was nervous. I had never actually been on a date before. Not a real one anyway. The guy came to the door and asked my Mom how she was and what time I had to be home by and then we were off. I looked at my Mom all wide eyed as I walked out the door. I was going on a date.and it was before I turned 30!! (I was lucky my Dad was away on business...)

 So.who was that fellow with the shoddy truck in need of a new muffler, you ask?

 Adam. 10 years ago today..well this evening anyway. Adam picked me up and took me on our first date for my 18th birthday. I don't remember where we went to dinner (if I pull my diary out of the attic I could tell you.Lord knows I recorded every damn second of the evening as soon as I got home) but I do remember we went to the movies after. We watched Paycheck with Ben Affleck.  I can remember what area of the theater we sat in (although I don't think the theater exists anymore. I am pretty sure we went to the one in the Lockport Mall. RIP Lockport Mall). At some point throughout the evening he asked me to go out with him.

 Pause story.

 The phrase, "Going out" has always been sort of a joke in the Robinson household.  I would fill my parents in on the latest Medina High gossip on a regular basis and whenever I would say something along the lines of, ".and now she is going out with him" I would always get the same response.

 "Going out? Where are they going? They don't have a car. How are they going to get to where they are going?"

 So then I would (every single time) explain that they weren't necessarily going anywhere. They were dating..or as my parents liked to say, "Going steady."

  Resume story.

 When he asked me if I would go out with him my initial thought was, "We are out," but I didn't want to confuse him with my Robinson humor quite yet and I didn't want him to think I didn't understand what he meant.so I smiled and said, "Sure."

 And then.. On January 14th, 2004. I broke up with him.

 Here is a piece of advice if anyone reading this is single or in a new relationship.. Your friends mean well when they run their mouths to you about all the things they have heard about the person you are beginning to date or whatever. But that is all it is.things they have heard. Don't buy into all the rumors and decide to not figure it all out on your own and form your own opinions. Did my friends run their mouths to me about all the things they heard about Adam? You bet your ass they did. Did I listen? Yep.  But luckily I decided maybe he wasn't as bad as they were all saying and maybe I should give him a chance and ignore my friends. Even luckier was that he broke one of his rules when I told him I was sorry and I was dumb and made a mistake.he had a rule that he wouldn't date someone a second time that broke up with him..but he agreed that I was dumb and gave me another chance.

 So.on January 23rd , 2004 we started dating again.

 Now, it would be a lie if some of the rumors my friends told me didn't have a bit of truth to them. One of my friends lit into me about Adam while in the hallway by the cafeteria during period change. The spot we were in was PACKED with people swarming out of the cafeteria and people coming out of both hallways into the lobby. I don't know if it was because of the noise level in that area or the fact she really wanted to get her point across but she was telling me what a bad idea it was for me to date him and I was trying to tell her he wasn't so bad. She stopped walking, turned towards me, grabbed the leg of my bright red pants, gave it a hard shake and yelled, "HE IS ONLY WITH YOU BECAUSE HE WANTS TO GET IN YOUR PANTS!!!" Everyone in the lobby stopped talking and I turned the color of my bright red pants.  That was January 14th. I broke up with him that night.

 The bit of truth to that one is a bit more complicated than a 20 year old man and raging hormones. You see... our entire relationship began on a $10.00 bet.

 I can hear the gears in your head turning as you try to process and understand what I mean. I'll explain it for you.

 One of my closest friends now is Nickie Poler.  Nickie was dating one of Adam's buddies back then and Adam and I were in the "hold hands at the bowling alley but put them under the table so my Mom doesn't see" Fall 2003 stage in our relationship (she saw, by the way..ten years later and she still picks on us for it). Adam was talking to Nickie's boyfriend, Brandon, about how he kinda liked me. Nickie popped into the conversation right quick..

 Nickie: "Rachel? Rachel Robinson? Pfffft..there is no way. She's a prude, dude. There is no way."
Adam: "You don't know that."
Nickie: "Um..yeah. I do.. Ten bucks says you won't be able to nail her."

Adam was all.. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

How romantic. Doesn't that story just make you get all weepy and lovey dovey? :::Eye roll::: I (obviously) did not know about this bet until much, much later. I think we were engaged before I found out our love was born from a ten dollar wager.

I was pretty much a prude. I hadn't done anything except kiss a guy before. And I am not even talking make out kiss.I am talking, "Okay, bye Grandma, see you next Sunday" type smooch.  I always told myself that I wasn't gonna give up my V-card to someone unless I was in love with them.  So Adam had to wait a good long while to win that bet.

 However, we were talking last night and I was teasing him about the bet and I asked him, "When did you know I was more than just a bet?"
He said, "I know the right answer to this question."
I laughed, "You know the right answer, or the real answer?"
"Both.same moment..same answer."

He then told me that there was a night when we were at a party and all these girls kept telling me that Adam had slept with someone else. Just being catty, trouble starting bitches. I asked him about it and said he hadn't done it and I believed him and ignored the catty bitches. He said that was the moment that he realized he wanted to make me more than just the bet because I trusted him enough to ignore the rumors. An added bonus was that this realization came BEFORE the bet was won. He lurved me.

Oh.by the way. Nickie still owes him $10.00.

 That was just the first instance of a long list of things that some of our friends and co-workers think is "strange" about our relationship.  I was told he cheated on me.he told me he didn't.I believed him.  Boom. Done. Trust. If you can't start a relationship built on a solid foundation of trust what the hell are you building it for? While he was stationed in Oklahoma and I was in Texas he had a two bedroom apartment with a friend. That friend's name is Angela. Yes.my husband lived with another woman for the majority of a three year span and I was totally okay with it because I knew and trusted nothing was gonna happen.  There are so soooooo many other things about us that others fine odd. But it works for us..it is us. We trust each other and if that is "strange" then I feel sad for the people that don't have that.

Sometime in February of 2004 Adam said he had to tell me something. He said that he had promised himself when he was younger that he would not say, "I love you" to anyone he was in a relationship until his wedding day. He told me that other girls had broken up with him for it because they would say it and he wouldn't say it back. He said that he had seen a lot of instances throughout his life that made him believe the phrase was used way too liberally and that when he finally did say it he wanted it to have real meaning behind it. I told him I was okay with that because he was explaining it and that I hoped he didn't mind if I said it to him because when I did fall in love with him I wanted him to know and I didn't have the same feelings about when to say it like he did. He said it was fine as long as I didn't expect to hear it back. I told him that he was right, they were just words and if he ended up falling in love with me he could show me instead of tell me.

That is why our song is "More Than Words" by Extreme.

I did say it, eventually. We were standing by my car in the driveway at the Shelby house and I was getting ready to go home. He was leaning against the passenger door and we were talking and I said I wanted to tell him something but I wasn't sure if I should or not. He told me I could tell him anything. So I did. I said, "I love you." He smiled and pulled me too him for a hug, kissed my forehead and said, "I know you do."

There were a few times he said something very close to "that three word phrase". Always very casually in a conversation we were having and I never acknowledged it happened or said, "OMG, what did you just say????" Example (the first time it was said): I said something one day about buying a box of hair dye because it had been a few years since I dyed my hair and I was getting bored with it. He said, "Nahh, don't do that. I love you the way you are." To which I replied, "But the way I am is boring me." (Inside I was soaring.I could have totally had a freak out SQUEEEE moment but I didn't. I didn't want him to think he broke his promise to himself so I was very non-chalant on the outside.)

Adam proposed to me on January 21st, 2006 and he still hadn't said "I love you" directly. Something that people who knew the story just couldn't understand. ("Wait.you said yes to marriage but he hasn't said he loves you yet? Seriously??")  We went to Canada with some friends to celebrate our two year anniversary  and he proposed by Niagara Falls. His proposal was epic and abso-frickin-lutely PERFECT. We were all dressed to go to the club..it was January and really friggin' cold..annnndddd Adam insisted we stop at the Falls first.

Me: "Dude. it is dark out. We won't be able to see the falls."
Adam: "We are stopping at the falls."
Me: "We aren't really dressed to go look at the falls in the middle of January."
Adam: "We are going to the falls."
Me: "But it's cold."
Adam: "We are going. We are. We're going."
Me: "Alright.."

So we get to the falls.. Baba the limo driver parks in a parking lot and the six of us pile out and walk in our skimpy clubbin' clothes to the railing. We could hear the falls but we couldn't see them. Adam said he wanted to give me my anniversary gift before we went to the club. He handed me a pink gift bag. I opened it and pulled out a small cardboard box..the kind that a ring box would be in. My heart started pounding. I looked at my two friends that were standing nearby and they both had identical, "Holy shit" faces on. I looked at Adam and he said, "Well.open it."

So I lifted the lid off and inside the box there was a piece of paper. My first thought was, "Paper! I can handle paper! I like paper!" I pulled the paper out and unfolded it. The first couple of lines said how Christmas had just passed and he didn't have a whole lot of extra cash and he knew I really liked it when he wrote me letters and stuff. Then it said read the rest out loud.

I did. It was a poem and it was awesome.  I read all the way down and the last stanza was missing the last line. I looked up at him and he stared at me for a few seconds, reached his hand back to his cousin Brett who handed him something from his pocket (sneaky sneaky) and knelt down on one knee.

He finished the poem. The missing line was, "Rachel Robinson, will you marry me?"

Let me tell you all something..if you even have a big event happening and you don't have the ability to get a photographer...buy some disposable cameras (you know..the wind and click kind.) and hire Brett Bielak to be your shutterbug. That man can work a wind and click camera like the frickin' paparazzi. Seriously.

 Needless to say...I said yes.

October 27th, 2007. We were both in the Navy at this point. Both in Pensacola for school and a couple of weeks prior we had found out that he was going to go to Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City and I was going to go to Willow Grove, Pennsyl-frickin-vania. Um.no thanks. The only way they could get me closer than that was if we were married. We hadn't planned on a courthouse style wedding but I was not going to frickin' Pennsyl-tucky. Nope. I also refused to get married in a court house. So.we got married on the beach. And 27 is my favorite number so I was super happy it fell on a Saturday. (And..by the wonderful invention of the leap year it fell on a Saturday  five years later when we did our big white wedding vow renewal deal. )

 That chilly day in October.standing on the beach at sunset. the pastor we had found to marry us said, "I now pronounce you husband and wife.you may kiss the bride". Adam leaned forward, kissed me, leaned back, smiled and said, "I love you."

Yup. He lurves me. I lurve him back a lottle. Our weirdness compliments each other and our opposite-ness is fantastic. We have our moments where we annoy the shit out of each other and piss each other off. That is when we don't like each other very much. We never say we hate each other when we are mad. My most used phrase at the end of an argument.right before I decide we are getting nowhere and I am gonna walk away before we start repeating our strong opinions over and over at a higher volume level is this: "I love you...but right now I don't like you very much at all." Sometimes I skip all the wordi-ness and go with, "I don't like you right now." To which he responds with, "Yeah, I don't like you right now, either."

You don't gotta like your spouse all the time..but you gotta love them always. I love mine, always.

 Especially on Tuesdays.