The Ginger Remains

The first words I spoke to my then-future husband were, “Don’t fall in love with me.” His response was, “I think it’s already too late.”

A few hours before, a group of us had converged on the local Shari’s restaurant after our theater troupe’s night of vampire cosplay. We drank bitter coffee like it was the only thing keeping us alive and shoved bites of rapidly cooling food into our mouths between stories of ourselves and highlights of the night’s events. The mood was raucous, and the laughter contagious.

Since I was the newcomer of the group, I was the focus of much attention. Amid cacophonous laughter over my regaling of the story of the first time I met someone of a different sexual orientation, I made the flippant comment, “Don’t fall in love

with me.”

As a recent divorcee at the ripe old age of seventeen, I wasn’t looking to get into another serious relationship, and I certainly didn’t want to be in love. Love was what had gotten me into the last mess and why I had had to move from my tiny hometown in eastern North Carolina to the foreign country of western Oregon.

With hair the color of an orange crayon and covered with freckles, he wore a Hawaiian shirt so loud and so ugly that it could probably be seen—and complained about—from space. He topped six feet by several inches and had a lanky build. He was definitely not my type, whatever that was.

He petitioned me for months to go out with him for a cup of coffee, and once I agreed, he convinced me to repeat it nearly every subsequent night. I later found out he’d already told his friends he was going to marry me.

He was there to bail me out of jail when I was arrested for throwing mashed potatoes at my stepfather.

He let me punch his stomach when I cried over my ex-husband being an asshat. Then, he bought me a punching bag and encouraged me to keep up the habit.

He convinced me to sign marriage papers “for tax purposes” after our first child was born. He never seemed disappointed or upset when I would “fail” yet another pregnancy test, even if we just had a baby a couple of months old.

When our children were all teenagers, and I LOST MY MIND and decided I wanted another baby, he was supportive of me. He told me I was crazy, but he was supportive.

When my oldest daughter posted 158 photos of my vagina on Facebook, just because her little brother happened to be exiting it at the time, he was there to keep me from wrecking our car.

He held me after the death of our son, Theodore, when I would stop in the middle of a retail store’s aisle and bawl over some baby item I saw. He started planning our routes around stores to avoid the baby section.

He held me through all the bumps and bruises, hopes, and hiccups in life. He religiously killed spiders, wiped noses, opened doors, and lifted heavy objects for me—and he still does. He strove to actively be my best friend, and I fell in love with him in moments, over my own strident objections.

He wore me down. His journey of falling in love with me not only led to my falling in love with him, but also with myself. Twenty-five years later, we have seven beautiful children and a legacy of love I never imagined I would have. The loud Hawaiian shirts are gone, but the ginger remains.