Kate & Nik

As I learned when I reread my original edition on this site, I have been telling this story in many different ways over the years. Let me now, in hopes of escaping that cringing moment when you stumble upon proof that you were indeed once young and really, really stupid, tell it once again in a manner that doesn't shame my entire being.

Nik was an overly-gelled, overly-cocky server at your average corporate restaurant. I was...the same, really. With less gel. We both cursed a lot, I remember. The aforementioned original edition gives evidence to both that, and to my (hopefully long dead) need to show off how against the grain I really was (I wasn't, I was just 18 and stupid.)

But yes, I was 18, and he was 22. We worked together and had a quite a jolly time ignoring one another for a month or two, save for a few obnoxious exchanges by the beverage station. Our first "date" was at a bar within a bowling alley with several of our esteemed colleagues. Our courtship flourished quite nicely for a few months, assuming courtship in the 00's can be sometimes defined as drinking buddies who kiss occasionally. We dated and drank and broke up now again over one thing (a returned ex-girlfriend) or another (the movie Waiting. With Ryan Reynolds. I'm not even kidding.) Our relationship, often fraught with disrespect and emotional drama, should not have survived beyond a year or so.

But that's where the real story lies, the one I'm still proud to tell. The two kids who were so badly run off the beaten path started growing up some. I've noticed that often when two really messed up people find each other, and then start to become slightly less messed up people, they find they have little and less in common. They grow up, grow apart, part ways. Nik and I grew up, grew closer, grew together.

Those years ago we started with a lot of late nights, a lot of cheap beer, a lot of bad arguments and a handful of breakups. Seven years later and we're a force as couples who've been together for a lifetime are sometimes not - call it dog-years, but what our relationship has endured has broken us down and put us back together as one.

In 2004, Nik and I met a really crappy restaurant in the mall. In early 2007, we moved in together with my then 3 year old son. On November 18th, 2008, Nik proposed to me outside Lincoln Financial Field before my first Eagles game. On September 6th, 2008, we were married. On January 13th, 2009 we had our first baby together, a beautiful little boy. On February 12th, 2010, we buried our son together. On August 12th, 2011, we had our second son together. We have taken jobs and lost them, entered school, left it, entered again. We've been broke and we've been comfortable. We've seen the best moments of our lives thus far together, and surely, the worst. Our story of love is as bumpy as they come, and I'm sure there's more ahead of us. But it's a story in a volume that's bound to be epic, and we add more to it every day.


/endcheese