Twenty

Once upon a time…

…way back in 1970, “Marcus Welby, M.D.” was on television, the Jackson Five were singing “ABC,” gas was 36 cents a gallon, and a couple of crazy kids were born – Mr. Andi and me. I came first, in January, with Mr. Andi a couple of months later, in March. We were born only a couple of hours away from each other in Alabama – he in Auburn, I in Birmingham – but he took detours through Louisiana, Arkansas, Australia, Texas, and Indiana before finally arriving in my hometown back in Alabama shortly after graduating from high school.

You might think that our story would begin there, in my hometown, where he lived with his uncle, who was active in the same local theater group that my mom and sister frequented, and where he became chummy with a boy who was a former high school flame of mine and a girl who was my future college roommate, but you’d be wrong.

We should have met through that roommate, and all the evidence points to a meeting in Auburn, when he and two of his friends visited my roommate at our apartment. He remembers the apartment perfectly, and briefly saw “Amanda’s roommate” fly in and out, and I remember the two friends (who I knew from high school) visiting from out of town one time with a third guy I’d never met before. Apparently, neither of us made much of an impression on the other.

Or maybe it just wasn’t our time yet.

Having missed the earlier opportunities through our hometown connections, you might think that our story would begin in Auburn, after Mr. Andi transferred there, where we both earned degrees in engineering, but you’d be wrong again. We never crossed paths in our time on the Plains, and then I graduated and moved to Birmingham to begin working as a consulting engineer. I enjoyed the work, but I really wanted to work in power, not construction, and a couple of years later I got my chance.

In early December of 1994, I walked into the staffing office of my soon-to-be employer. My interview was scheduled for the next day, but because I was being considered for a special training program for engineers, I was expected to attend a dinner with several executives, engineers currently in the program, and the other candidates. Three of them had arrived before me, and I tried making small talk. One of the candidates was standoffish and, I have to say it, even a little rude. In a move that was quite unlike me, I persisted in trying to have a conversation with him, only to learn that we had a hometown connection.

And that was the real beginning…

We rode up the elevator to the executive dining room together, sat at the same table (though not next to each other – we had executives to impress, after all), rode back down the elevator together at the end, and the human resources guy in charge of the whole thing suggested that he walk me to my car under the guise of safety (a year later, when we were invited back to the same dinner, he would tell the whole room that he knew there was a spark between us that night, and the walk to the car was his way of matchmaking).

Two months after the dinner, we had our first sorta-date when Mr. Andi drove almost three hours each way to Tuscaloosa on a weeknight for an Auburn-Alabama basketball game (with his friend Kevin as a very gracious third wheel). Six months after the dinner, we were engaged, and fourteen months after the dinner, we were married.

Every couple has a story, and of course we are no different. For roughly the first third of our marriage, we were young professionals, childless but not by choice. We lost two babies, which was difficult but also bonded us together in a way we never expected. We began to believe that children were not in our future, but we were wrong.

It just wasn’t our time yet.

Finally, at the end of 2002, the child we’d wished for finally arrived, shockingly small and fragile, but alive and healthy. A few months after she was born, we both left the company that introduced us. I became a stay-at-home mom, shocking everyone who knew me, and Mr. Andi took a job with a smaller utility, allowing us to move away from the big city. A few years later, he changed jobs again, bringing us to our current home in Mayberry.

Seven more years passed, and with it all of the struggles that come with having a child with special needs. We gave up on having other children, assuming it wasn’t in God’s plan for us. When Sarah Kate asked us for a baby brother or sister, we smiled and told her that not everyone has siblings.

But just as before, it wasn’t our time yet.

Almost six years have passed since Nathan came long, changing us once again. I’d be lying if I said that things are and have always been easy. Our courtship was the proverbial fairy tale, while our two decades together have been anything but – littered with challenges, great and small. Two decades ago, we knew very little about cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, and we certainly had no idea that both would touch us. I would never have believed that I would eventually “swim the Tiber” and become Catholic, and that Mr. Andi would follow me just a few years later. The idea that we would be spending our twentieth anniversary at Ash Wednesday Mass would never have crossed my mind. But all of the above is part and parcel of our life together – a life I cherish and can’t imagine changing.

Our love back in 1996 was lovely and untarnished, but two decades on it is well worn and practical. It has been refined by the fire until it is pure and unyielding. I have loved this man for over twenty years, since long before my hair was gray and my skin was wrinkled, and I’ll do so until my dying breath.

“In time all things grow old and weak, but my love for you only grows strong and better with every second of every day.” – Anonymous