What You Will

There’s this magical thing about the twelfth of the month in our household.

It started 20 years ago today, when M and I went on our first official date. We’d met at work a couple years earlier and had been good friends for at least a year, but on the 12th of February, 1990, we went out together in the evening to see a music performance of family friend in Cambridge, MA.

Since we were going to see a family friend, naturally my parents were there, on our first date. Which is a bit odd now that I think of it, but, at the time, it seemed quite normal. I guess because, in my mind, it wasn’t a DATE date (though I was hoping it would be, and I’m not sure what he was thinking at the time). I figured we were close pals getting together in the evening to listen to music. It wasn’t really until after the concert, when we went across Harvard Square to the Algiers coffee house and shared dessert and talked for hours, that I knew for sure this was the beginning of something.

A year-and-a-half later, we’re camping by the ocean in northern Maine. We had gone north of Boston with friends so that we could see the annual Perseid meteor shower in the full darkness of a Maine night. Peak night, August 12, 1991, near midnight, we’re swinging on a campground swing set, alone, under the black sky with crazy stars careening overhead. And he proposes.

Eight years later, Hyla is born. August 12, 1999. A day before her due date. She has impeccable timing.

So, today we celebrate the Twelves. 20 years together, 10-and-a-half years with Hyla. 12 is a sublime number.