Tonight, I have opened a bottle of wine that Dan bought on one of his business trips to California a couple of years ago. I've been saving it for a special occasion, and I think my birthday qualifies. This particular wine was bottled in 2002. That was kind of a watershed year for me, one that has quite a lot to do with where I am with my life today.
Let's review.
In January of 2002, four years ago tomorrow as it turns out, my mom and dad helped me load up all my worldly belongings (the funiture pieces of which were actually some of their worldly belongings) and the next day, my mom and I started out on the long, boring drive to Clovis, New Mexico, where I was headed to take my first newspaper job. A few weeks earlier, my dad had flown out to Clovis with me to see the town and meet the editor of the paper, who told me that if I came to Clovis, he would teach me how to be a reporter. His name was David Stevens, and he was a quiet kind of man. He still is. And he wasn't lying. He taught me everything I know about newspapers. Which isn't all there is to know, but which is a lot more than I knew then.
But back then, I didn't really know how the whole thing was going to turn out. It was the scariest decision I ever made, and I'm not sure that if I had to do it over again, I would be brave enough to go for it. And if I hadn't, a lot of good things would never have happened.
I went to Clovis, and my mom helped me find an apartment and move into it. She stayed in town for a few days and hung curtains and blinds in my very first apartment. I am pretty sure that if my mom had any grey hair, I gave her some of it on that trip. But when it was time for her to go, she did, and she's a brave woman for doing it. Thus started 2002. David taught me how to write for newspapers, and bore with me while I made mistakes that some people would have fired me over.
And then in March, a weird thing happned. I got an email from a guy named Dan who I had met about a year before when I was helping my friend Liz move to Texas to be an intern with Reformed University Fellowship, the campus ministry of the Presbyterian Church of America. Dan told me that he had just accepted a summer internship with Sandia National Labs, and he'd be coming out in May. And when he did, he'd like to stop by and take me to dinner. We started emailing back and forth, pretty much every day for the next two months.
In May, he came to visit, and we went on our first date to a little Mexican place called Guadalajara Cafe. It's this hacienda-style place, and it's not designed for tall people. I remember that Dan hit his head on the door on the way in. It looked pretty painful, but he took it with a sense of humor. And that put me so at ease that we had a great night and sat on my porch and talked until midnight. We started dating that summer. By the time he was ready to go back to school, we had decided we were going to get married. I went to San Antonio to meet his parents. He came to Mississippi to meet mine.
In November, I came home for Thanksgiving and was surprised to see Dan in the airport, holding a bouquet of roses and a beautiful ring. He had driven in two days early to ask my dad for my hand in marriage. And Dad said yes, a brave move considering that he didn't know a whole lot about Dan at the time. I said yes, too. We got married in April of 2003.
I am still a newspaper reporter. I am married to Dan and we live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Life is good.
So here's to 2002. And 2006, the 26th year of my life. I have every reason to believe it will be good.