Karen and I first met at Packer, where we both went to middle school and upper (high) school. Our class was small - we graduated with 42 other people - everyone pretty much knew everyone else. Because of the size, the school really didn't have the cliques and social groups that most people associate with high school. However, while we all knew each other and would hang out together in social situations, there were of course people who were closer to each other and people who were mostly acquaintances. Karen and I were more of the latter toward each other and I spent most of my time admiring her from afar in a John Hughesian kind of way.
That's right. I spent much of high school imagining just being out on a date with Karen Rothman and daydreaming about her. I even took a job for in-school community service (we needed to volunteer a certain number of hours in order to graduate) managing the girls varsity basketball team because she played on it. Not only did I get to know her a little better, but managed to put myself next to her in the team picture of our senior yearbook...pretty slick, no? The picture was about as close as I got to her during high school; never did get that date. I would have to wait eighteen years, three months, and fourteen days from our graduation on June 14, 1989, to get the chance and I didn't waste it. After reconnecting on MySpace.com and exchanging a few emails we met on September 27, 2007. When she walked into the bar that evening she look as good - no, make that better...much better - than she did when we were classmates. We had a couple drinks at The Gate where, while we goofed around throwing darts in the general vicinity of the board, I confessed my high school crush to her. Always direct with her statements, Karen said I should have made a move back then and seized the moment. Well, after a couple more drinks and change of bars, I did. While we were shooting pool in the backroom there was a lull in the game and the conversation turned in a direction that gave me an opening that, based on what she had said earlier, I wasn't about to let pass me by again. So I took her in my arms and kissed her. Right there in the bar, right there against the pool table.
That night was a dream come true. What I couldn't have imagined was that it was the beginning of the dream and not the end of it. All I had wanted in high school was to be on a date with Karen, to kiss her, to feel her in my arms. In my wildest, high school mind I could never have conceived that ten months and 22 days after that kiss I would be standing next to her and under the chuppa at the the Prospect Park Boathouse for our wedding. But there we were and she never looked more beautiful than she did that evening.
She was radiant. Tonight I have been looking back through almost all of the pictures from the day, in each she has a smile stretching from ear to ear and a sparkle in her eye. It was a perfect day. I can still remember with absolute clarity what it was like standing at the end of the aisle watching her walk down arm in arm with her parents. She had to navigate stairs draped with fabric, a floor length dress, and high-heels, but the whole time she was walking she was staring straight at me with those sparkle filled eyes. When I close my eyes now I can see that image perfectly.
As she walked toward me I couldn't help but thinking it was all a dream. How on earth did I get so lucky. How did the "it" girl from high school end up saying yes to me when I asked her to marry me at a club in New York City without even a ring to offer her? Whatever it was, I knew that it was a perfect moment and that her gaze held all the love, support, and beauty that any man could hope to have. We decided to write our own vows but didn't share them until we read them to each other in front of our friends and family. I thought I lost hers and tore my apartment apart looking for the piece of paper. Thankfully, her mother had taken both to put them in a scrapbook. Friday she returned them to me and the words Karen wrote made clear that my happiness was matched by hers. As I read them over and over again the last few days, each time I can hear her voice reading them to me as she did that day. This is what she wrote and said:From the day we re-met you have surrounded me with your love warmth and kindness
With you I feel completely myself
With you I feel understood, heard
Andrew, you share yourself with me without reservation.
You confide in my your joys fears and wonderings
You look and listen at the world
with clear open eyes
the eyes of wisdom
Everyone who has met me today has remarked at how calm & relaxed I appear. How can I be anything else when I know that our marriage is the most natural and organic paths our lives can take.
I am for you and you for me
My love for eternity.
Ani li dodi, v dodi li.
As part of our wedding program we used a lithograph from Andy Warhol with his quote "I wonder if it's possible to have a love affair that lasts forever." When we put it in the program, we gave our own answer for all the world to see - "we KNOW it is." I think about that often, especially because we have the print next to our bed. How could we have ever imagined that forever would be only one year, one month and twenty-one days or that the eternity Karen wrote about would come so soon and so suddenly. Even with that, I look back on August 17, 2008 and remember the happiness and joy we shared, albeit far too briefly.
Happy anniversary Karen - my eternal love, my wife forever.
