10 years ago we fell in love

10 years ago (last night) Michelle and I had our first “real” date, at the Spring Banquet held at Rock City. we always say that was the night we fell in love “lauging and dancing in spinning embrace”. I wrote a poem about it back in the day for creative writing class, which I then turned into a song.

so to celebrate I (completely) surprised Michelle with a special night out. we were actually scheduled to go to the Indelible Grace concert. even though I was looking forward to that, this easily trumped it, and provided a great excuse to get a babysitter without arousing suspicions.

I got her some flowers at St. Elmo’s florist, Making Arrangements (next to Coptix). they do awesome work, so I highly recommend checking them out.

the main event was a return to Rock City to remember that special evening. we had a leisurely stroll through the grounds, enjoying a simply beautiful evening and all the flowers and trees they’ve got there. if you would have asked me if I thought Rock City was a good place for a date in general, I probably would have said no, but it really was a nice place to go to be together, and of course the memories made it even more special. we came to the place where the dancing was and took a few turns for old times sake. we’re still bad dancers, but still had a good time with it. I did an updated version of the poem/song too, which I read to her.

after that we were off to the Canyon Grill for some fine dining, which was of course very good. on the way back we were passing the hangglider bluff right as the sun was going down, so we took in the view for a while, remembering some of the other times we’ve been there over the years. then Michelle had the idea to stop at Covenant to stroll around the campus to relive some of those memories. wow, it’s changed a lot up there, but we found the place where I put our initials in the concrete by our dorm. it was nice remembering those lovely days of falling in love and doing the college thing.

to wrap things up we stopped by the Starbucks at Rock City and delved into yet more memories. I recently stumbled across a few folders with all of our letters and notes and cards we’ve given eachother over the years, including some printouts of old emails and all the letters we wrote eachother when we were first dating and Michelle was in Peru. it was really cool seeing all this stuff and rediscovering some poems and hand-made cards. we wrote some LONG letters that summer. maybe some day we’ll type some of that up so it’ll be brought into the digital age. Michelle figured we may be the last generation to have done long hand-written letters :-) looking at all that stuff and remembering the path that we’ve come down, the biggest thought I had in my mind was that it was completely worth it. the only thing I would change is getting married sooner (although we were married pretty much as soon as was practically possible).

there was a couple of collge kids in the starbucks studying together, and they looked like they were probably dating. I wanted to tell them “it is SO worth it. fall in love! enjoy eachother!” we’ve been so blessed to still be madly in love 10 years after it all started.