Happy Anniversary to Us!

I fell in love with Matthew in Camelot. This is true. There used to be a park just off the Springville exit called Camelot. It is no longer there, which is sad, but that is where I fell in love with Matthew for good and certain. If you've already heard the story, well, I happen to think it's a rather nice romance, and if you haven't, then we should talk, because there's LOTS more than just this. Like the conversation in front of Bridal Veil Falls where he told me he didn't feel right about dating me. But this post is about how I fell in love with him, not how I wanted to strangle him.

We went to Camelot one Saturday (NOT on a date) and wandered around enjoying the shade under the trees and just talking. There was an irrigation ditch/canal that went through the park, and on the other side of it was this beautiful meadow. We wanted to go walk in the meadow, but to get there we had to walk across a log over the ditch. Now, it was a good-sized log, and if it had been on the ground I could have walked on it till the cows came home. But it wasn't on the ground, it was over some truly nasty-looking water, and there was just no way I was going to risk falling into that muck. There was also a four-year-old little boy wearing shorts and cowboy boots that was just zipping back and forth across that thing. He made me feel very foolish. But not foolish enough to walk across that log. And I really wanted to go walk in that meadow. So Matthew sat down on the log facing me, his long legs almost dipping in the water below, and told me to sit down facing him. Then he scooted backwards across the log, telling me to look at him and not down at the water, until we reached the other side. The little boy stood on the bank and laughed and teased Matthew about being too scared to stand up and walk across the log. Matthew never even said a word to him, he just kept talking to me, calmly, until we made it across. The meadow, by the way, was a mosquito breeding ground like I've never seen before. You actually couldn't breath because they would fly in your mouth or up your nose. It was nasty, so in only a few moments, we were back on the log again, Matthew scooting backwards until we were back on the other side. He never did say anything to the kid. And I fell in love with him.

A week later I went back to Camelot by myself and walked across the log several times. I didn't fall, and I didn't scoot, and I didn't tell anybody I was going to do it. Matthew had already made it impossible for me to fail. It was already okay if I was too afraid to walk across, but that time, I wasn't.

The rest of the story is that less than a year later we were married (it still took some time after that for us to actually date, but I said I wouldn't go into that here). Today makes it a whopping, wonderful fifteen years, and Matthew is still scooting across logs for me, telling me to look at him, not the scary stuff around me, and making it impossible for me to fail.

How absolutely fitting that I fell in love with him in Camelot.