My Defining Days of the Decade: #7

Continuing with Brendan’s Defining Days of the Decade:

#12: May 15, 2003: Becky and I Graduate From College
#11: November 7, 2000: The Election of a Lifetime
#10: August 14, 2003: The Great Northeast Blackout
#9: September 15, 2008: The Economy Implodes — And I Get A Job
#8: July 3, 2004: Becky and I Get Engaged

Number Seven…

July 2, 2000: The Day I Fell In Love

I’ve done two posts so far about events related to Becky’s and my relationship, both recalling our transition from college boyfriend & girlfriend to something substantially more serious. Now, for this “defining day,” I go back in time — back to the origins of our love.

(Warning: Extreme sappiness ahead. Romantics will love it, but cynics beware!)

Becky and I lived in the same dorm, Trojan Hall, during our freshman year at USC, and I developed a crush on her very early on, way back in the last decade, in the fall of 1999. At first, she regarded me as a total dork, not worthy of her romantic attention. Given that my “love life” up to that point had consisted of a long series of unrequited crushes, this seemed perfectly normal to me. But Becky and I soon became friends — and then I began to slowly whittle away at the “not worthy of romantic attention” part (if not the “total dork” part).

Still, it took some time for Becky to come around to the whole dating thing. Our “first kiss” — on the cheek — was at Disneyland, on Splash Mountain, on my 18th birthday, October 30, 1999. We had our “first date” on December 1, 1999, but it was a “date” only in retrospect; really it was just a field trip with my astronomy class to do some stargazing, which I invited her to, and which let to some keep-out-the-cold snuggling. But our initial efforts at romance in late December flopped.

Finally, in February 2000, shortly after Valentine’s Day, we got together. Our first real kiss was on February 19. Our official “anniversary” was February 25. (The photo at left shows us going to a dorm dance on March 24, the night before our first “monthaversary.”)

We quickly became a pretty serious couple. I met her parents in mid-May. If you’d asked me then whether I was in love with Becky, I might have said yes, or at least “I think so.” But in fact, there would soon be a single, clearly identifiable day — indeed, a moment — when I would fall absolutely, unalterably, undeniably, head-over-heels in love with her. And it happened only after a period of absence, which, as they say, made the heart grow fonder.

On May 21, I saw Becky off as she departed from JFK for a summer abroad in London. At right, you see Becky going through airport security — my last view of my first girlfriend for the next six weeks.

We were separated by an ocean for 42 days — almost half the entire prior length of our relationship (86 days). We kept in touch pretty regularly via her phone cards and trips to the nearby Easy Everything Internet cafe, not to mention snail-mailed care packages accompanied by sappy letters and sentimental mementos. But we weren’t sure when we’d actually see each another again. I didn’t yet have concrete plans to visit her in England, though I hoped to convince my parents to let me do so (and pay for it, natch).

My borderline-obsessive talk about Becky (or, as my Dad put it, “beckybeckybecky”) during our family vacation to Nova Scotia in late May and early June — I even converted my old dorm whiteboard to a “shrine to Becky,” pictured at left, and brought it with us on the trip; I kid you not — helped convince my parents that this girl, and this relationship, were important enough that a trip to England might be justified. In June, they agreed, and I bought my plane tickets. I would depart JFK on July 1 and arrive at Heathrow on July 2 for a two-week visit.

My anticipation of the trip was overwhelming. As I walked down the streets of Connecticut’s small towns each weekday, going door-to-door as part of my summer job as a “canvasser” (i.e., fundraising lackey) for the Ralph Nader-founded lefty organization ConnPIRG, I would hum the song “Hooked on a Feeling” as I thought about Becky and pondered how I’d put the money I was earning toward my trip to see her. Each night, I counted the days remaining till I left. I couldn’t wait.

But nothing could prepare me for the feeling I’d experience on July 2, when I finally reunited with Becky.

It was, of course, a long and exhausting flight from New York to London, a transatlantic red-eye. Then, once the plane had landed, I had to go through the ritual of filling out forms, going through customs, etc. Normally I handle such things with relative aplomb, but knowing that Becky was waiting on the other side — that my six-week wait would be over, just as soon as these damn Brits would let me into their damn country — made the delay excruciating.

Finally, finally, they stamped my passport, they cleared me, they let me through, I wandered into the meet-and-greet area for international arrivals … and there she was, wearing a fluorescent pink shirt, some sparkly makeup, and a subtle, sexy little smile (sample in photo at right, taken a few days later). She was, at that moment, the most beautiful sight my eyes had ever seen — the girl I loved.

That was the moment I fell in love with Becky. I instantly knew it: I loved her. There was no more doubt, no “maybes,” no “I think so.” I was absolutely, without any question, truly, madly, deeply in love. We walked up to each other, embraced, and shared a very long kiss, not caring who was watching, or what they thought about PDA.

Becky, my first girlfriend, the first girl I’d ever kissed, had become the first girl I’d ever loved. (And, as I now know, the last.)

It probably goes without saying why this makes July 2, 2000 a defining day of my decade, but I’ll try to give a brief explanation anyway. My relationship with Becky was, and is, the central fact of my decade, the core foundation of the last ten years of my life (and of all the years to come). So the day I fell in love with her is certainly a defining day of the decade. How could it not be?

Becky and I started dating at the very beginning of the decade; we got engaged roughly a third of the way through it; we got married just after its halfway point; and we spent the final quarter of the decade having, and starting to raise, our kids. For me, the 2000s are all about Becky.

Another way of looking at it is this: almost every other item on this list involves Becky in some way. (Her fingerprints will be all over my long list of “honorable mentions,” too.) In some cases, like our engagement day, this is obvious; in others, like Election Night 2000, it’s less so. Yet she was there that night, in the Daily Trojan newsroom, helping me put together the DT‘s election coverage. Other such examples will follow in the coming days.

The only real exception is the blackout, which happened when I was living by myself in NYC, during Becky’s and my post-graduation period of relationship uncertainty. But even then, I called Becky on my cell phone to tell her what was happening, as I was walking toward Times Square. She has been, in one way or another, a part of — if not the central figure in — just about every significant event that’s happened in my life over the last ten years. Indeed, in a real sense, this is not just my decade that I’ve been reminiscing about over the last several days; it’s our decade. And that’s part of what makes the creation of this list so interesting and fun for me.

Having said that, there’s another, more microcosmic reason why July 2, 2000 belongs on this list. The emotion I experienced that day, the overwhelming feeling of pure, unadulterated love for another person, washing over me like a tsunami, is something that’s just absolutely wonderful. That it happened to be the first time I’d ever fallen in love — and that it was with the person I would ultimately marry — only makes it more special. But the feeling itself, in its own right, is probably enough to cause this day to make the list regardless.

The rush of falling in love the way I did on June 2, 2000, is something I can’t really put into words adequately, but I hope everyone reading this has experienced it, or else experiences it at some point. It’s greater than any Hollywood movie cliché or hackneyed country song or even a glorious Shakespearian sonnet. It’s indescribable. It’s incomparable. It’s a thing unto itself. It’s… love.

FULL DISCLOSURE: The photo at the top of this post was not actually taken on July 2, 2000. It was taken four days later, on July 6, on a hiking trail in Scotland, where Becky and I spent a weekend during my visit to London. I don’t actually have any pictures of Becky from July 2. And maybe that’s a sign of just how overwhelming and unprecedented the moment of seeing her again really was: I didn’t even take a picture! 🙂

SCHEDULING NOTE: I’m re–re-revising my planned schedule for the remainder of my Defining Days of the Decade. 🙂 It was harder than I anticipated to get these things written while I was in Arizona for Christmas, and now I’m in Connecticut for a very quick visit, which I don’t want to squander writing blog posts. I expect, however, to have a significant amount of downtime on Monday, what with my Newark-Phoenix flight, followed by my several-hour wait at PHX for Becky & the girls to arrive for our flight together to Denver.

So, in light of that, here’s my new schedule. I’ll post nothing tomorrow. I’ll post #6 and #5 on Monday, 12/28. I’ll post #4 and #3 on Tuesday, 12/29. I’ll post #2 on Wednesday, 12/30. (If I can’t manage four posts on the preceding two days, then #3 may bleed into 12/30 as well.) And I’ll post #1 on Thursday, 12/31. As for the Honorable Mentions, I’ll post those whenever I can — possibly between #3 and #2, possibly between #2 and #1, or possibly on sometime during the weekend of January 1-3, after the Top 12 list is completed.