Waffle House Love

Our first date was at a Waffle House. After he drove 2,829 miles to reach me, I figured that buying him some waffles and hash browns--scattered, smothered, and covered--was the least I could do.

As far as first dates go, ours was pretty unique. We’d known each other for less than four months and only through phone conversations and emails. This was the first time we’d met face to face, and despite what should have been an awkward situation, everything about that moment felt just right.

The smell of bacon and stale coffee punctuated our conversation, and the only thing that interrupted our focus on each other was the occasional visit from our waitress. I think we were both in shock that we were together, in shock that we’d gone through with what any rational person would have called crazy.

We met online. We hadn’t been looking for each other, but you always seem to find the things you need even when you’re not looking. He lived in California; me in Georgia. But little things like distance weren’t going to keep us apart.

Our unique courtship was fast, too fast by some standards, but for us, it was perfect.  For four months, we spent nearly every waking moment talking to each other, learning each other’s quirks, falling in love even before we had the chance to lay eyes on one another.

Concerned friends desperately tried to talk me out of love, citing any number of very good and rational reasons why our relationship wouldn’t work. They worried that he was playing a game with me, that he was using me, that he was some random murderer bent on killing me. I listened patiently to their concerns; if the shoe had been on the other foot, I would have been the one voicing those concerns…but this was different. This was real, and I knew that in my heart.

I’m probably the least impulsive person you’ll ever meet. I always overanalyze and overthink every situation in my life. I always look before I leap. Every time, except this time. This time I let my heart do the thinking. I trusted that we were meant to be. Because we were. What other explanation could possibly be found for a typically cautious, withdrawn woman to throw away rational thought and do something so out-of-character and insane?

There is none, except that it was meant to be….much like that first date at the Waffle House was meant to be.

It wasn’t fancy, but it was us. I remember just how the sunlight filtered in on our table, how the engagement ring that he’d slipped on my finger the moment we met glinted in that brilliant light. I remember tilting my hand this way and that just to watch it sparkle. I remember thinking that this was the man I would spend the rest of my life with. I remember the happiness consuming me.

Happiness still consumes me nearly six years later. Jeremy and I are married now. We celebrate our fifth anniversary in October. We’re not perfect, by any means. We fight. We get on each other’s nerves. But we’re deliriously happy, and we love our life together with all of its quirks, the four cats that surround us, and those lovely dates at Waffle House.