Our Story: Also Known as “Purple and the Geek”
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I have so much catching up to do, so you’re getting a “Valentine’s Day” post a week late. And you’re getting an explanation, because I can’t just jump into anything, apparently. I feel like I tell this story a lot, but in the whole year I’ve been doing this blog I haven’t told this story to you. So now you get to hear the story I have just now titled “Purple and the Geek.”
It started in October, technically, of 2011. I was a transfer commuter to Geneva in my first semester there and I wanted to be involved on campus, but had no idea how. I learned of a costume contra dance going on in Skye Lounge for Halloween and I thought to myself “I love dancing and I love dressing up! This is perfect!” So I, with some freshmen friends, went to the contra dance and had a lovely time and noticed this one guy with red goo in his hair who was kind of cute. At the time, however, I had just dumped my boyfriend and was not looking for cute boys. I just wanted friends.
December came around and the end of the semester brought Film Fest to Geneva. I spent the night on my friend Danielle’s couch on campus and was hanging out with them that Saturday when she asked if it would be cool for her boyfriend to come over. Jess wanted him to shine her boots. So over comes Isaac and behind him that guy I recognized from the contra dance. The cute one. And I think to myself as he sits beside me on the couch, wouldn’t it be funny if we started dating? Danielle’s friend and Isaac’s friend, that’d be kind of fun. But of course we were both super awkward introverts and sat there quiet and awkward as Isaac shined Jess’s boots.
March, 2012. I enjoy contra dancing and I had a friend who was willing to adventure forth with me to these gatherings every other Saturday. She didn’t dance much, but she came with me anyway. There, again, was that cute guy. My friend was on the news paper staff, though, as a photographer, and was required to go to a lot of events Saturday evenings. I decided that I was a brave human and I could go to campus events by myself. I was brave, sure, but still super awkward. The guys were all very nice and would ask me to dance, for most of the sets, but interaction between sets was not a thing, until that cute guy took pity on me.
Wasn’t I Danielle’s roommate? No, but I stayed over there a lot. Ah. He was Logan, I was Bekah. It was nice to meet him. It really was.
I liked him. He talked to me, but he was also cute and geeky and very sweet. I found the courage, to talk to him more, insert myself into conversations with him so I could get to know him. I liked him, but I didn’t want to admit it. The problem with my last relationship had been that we weren’t friends first. We skipped over that and had we been friends first, I might have known that I shouldn’t date him. I didn’t want to make that mistake again. I wanted a friend to hang out with and if something came from that? Cool, but I didn’t want it to have to be that. I was resistant, but I’m not a subtle creature. So much so that he could tell I totally liked him, even though I was telling myself he was just a nice guy that I wanted to be my friend.
My Twirly likes to claim credit for our development at this stage. She tells me she pushed him at me. Her story goes that he said something about girls not liking him, or flirting with him, or something along those lines and she said “What about that girl at contra? She was totally flirting with you.” And he tried to deny it and she asked if he liked me and he nodded with much enthusiasm. This story makes me smile. She also claims responsibility for our first super awkward evening together. We had a lot of those, come to think of it. After every contra dance Logan’s group of friends would have a movie night. They had invited me over for one of these the time before this particular night and I had declined since they were watching I am Legend which I had seen and knew I would cry at and didn’t want to cry in front of a group of strangers. I went home, promising next time I would join in, and as I got into my car it occurred to me that I might have just turned down a date, and I felt really bad about it. So the next dance night, when he invited me over again, I jumped on the invitation happily. The problem was, there wasn’t a movie that night. This was literally the only time they didn’t have a movie planned for after contra and no one had told Logan. Twirly, apparently, knew and still told him to invite me without letting him in on the fact that there wasn’t a movie. So Logan and I sat awkwardly on a futon with the group’s established couple and watched the second half of Mission Impossible: 3, then hung out and talked until like 1, when open hours ended. He walked me back to my car and I drove home surprisingly giddy.
We hung out a here and there for the rest of the semester. I would look for him in the brig and try to talk to him when I could, and Twirls, being the wonderful human that she is, would see me in the brig and invite me to sit with his friends so I could sort of almost integrate into the group. The turning point came when he invited me to see The Avengers with them for the midnight premiere. I got his number, finally, so I could text him when I got there. I wasn’t sure how to get in, or if my ID would let me in even if I knew which door to use. After the movie everyone was saying goodbye for the summer and Logan let me know he was staying to do an internship with the PR department at Geneva. We decided we should hang out over the break since I would be working in the library all summer.
Our first summer encounter was super awkward and will not be spoken of because I’ve blocked it from my memory. Our real first date, when we’re not counting The Avengers outing as a date, was to Athen’s Family Restaurant on a Thursday when he got off work. Thursdays became our day to hang out and it was generally assumed after a while that we would meet up every Thursday, regardless of if we had made actual plans or not. He even told his friend that he had a “standing date” that day. He used the word date. Again, I went into this with the mindset of we were going to be friends and hang out all summer since we were both there and all. We had never established that they were dates, so I wasn’t sure if I should call them that, but he did pay for me every time we got food, so maybe the were dates? My sister insisted on dressing me when I went out because half the time I was leaving in my work clothes and they weren’t acceptable for a date, if that’s what it was. Better safe than sorry. It was the beginning of July before we established in full that we were, in fact, mutually interested in each other. We had watched a movie in Northwood because Skye was swarming with RP pastors at the time. We were sitting outside in the warm sunsety evening and talking about friends and siblings and interactions and he told me “I am interested in you, by the way. I hope that’s clear.” and I told him. “It is, at least, that’s what I hoped was going on.” And we talked about it and decided we weren’t exactly official, but we were getting there.
There was a tree swing outside Logan’s house his Senior year. I loved it.
I was still reluctant to commit. Just a year before that I had been in a relationship that was all wrong. Not a bad relationship, just a wrong one, and had we taken things slow and gotten to know each other first, I don’t think we would have dated at all. I didn’t want to make that mistake again. I had known Logan for roughly three months, was that enough to know? But after we had agreed that we were indeed interested in each other it seemed silly to not be a thing. So on July 12, 2012 we made it official. We were dating. My father-in-law once explained this time to a friend with: “We started hearing a lot about Purple Girl, and then Purple Girl got a name.” It’s one of my favorite accounts of our early relationship.
He kissed me for the first time on the 9th of February, 2013. He had a habit of kissing my cheek, or my nose or just close to my mouth, but not on it. We were sitting in my car outside the theater before a Saturday practice and he kissed my nose and I told him he’d missed. I was so pleased when, after I’d pointed out where my lips were, he corrected himself. That spring he told me he loved me after one of our devotional sessions. It was a Wednesday on a couch in his lounge and he just simply said “love you,” and then stared at me as I grinned ridiculously and said “I love you too.” I’d been wanting to say it forever, but I didn’t want to say it first. This was the first time I had had to wait for those words and they were so much better for the wait.
I realize that it sounds ridiculous to say that I knew he was the one from the beginning, but it’s kind of true. I mean, not from the very beginning, obviously. And there’s no way I could have known for sure, but I remember sitting on a bench in Skye lounge that first summer, having moved to the entrance hall where the lights were still on, and talking about life and stuff and whatever and thinking that I could marry him. Not that I hadn’t thought about marrying my other boyfriends, but it was never a feeling that I would. It was a vague, “if we get married” focusing on whatever I wanted in a wedding more than the man himself. But with Logan it was a “yeah, we’re on the same page here. We could get married.”
We had a conversation about engagement rings early on in the school year following the summer we started dating. It happens when you go to Geneva, people get engaged and things like that come up. I mentioned that I thought heirloom rings were the coolest and I would love to get one. His response was to inform me that his mom actually had his great-great grandmother’s engagement ring. This is going to sound super corny, I’m sure, but when he told me that I knew that would be my engagement ring someday. It was like a sign, you know? My mom had always told me that she wanted to get flowers from the man she would marry. It wasn’t a requirement or anything, but just something she thought would be nice. The only guy who got her flowers while they were dating was my dad. I don’t know if she got that feeling about him when he brought her flowers, but that’s all I could think of when Logan told me about the ring. Of course, it was still super early in our relationship and I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought after that, but still, I just knew.
And you know what? I was right. Logan proposed to me on August 11, 2013 with his great-great grandmother’s ring. But that’s a story for another time. We got married on July 12, 2014, and went to Maine for our honeymoon, which is also another story all to itself. One which I probably can’t tell you because I don’t remember that much of it. Not the honeymoon itself, actually, that’s pretty clear; the wedding, though, that’s all a blur. I told a friend recently that all I remember is that my father-in-law (who officiated the service) had 8 pages of sermon; I know because I watched him turn each page. I know he spoke on the wedding in Cana, but beyond that it’s only the image of turning pages.
So that’s our story! The cliff notes version, anyway. I’m sure you wouldn’t stick around long enough to read the whole thing, that would be unreasonable. I hoped you’ve enjoyed reading our tale as much as I’ve enjoyed living through it. I think it’s super cute, but then again, I’m super biased, so, you know.
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