Adam and I started a relationship ten years after our first date.
I don't remember our first meeting, we went to the same school in Manhattan. He was a year ahead of me, but we had a group of friends in common. It was those friends who set us up on a date, I think it was mid-1999, a year after I graduated. We were 19. It was a disaster.
I was taking a year away from college to "find myself." I had pink hair, and I'm pretty sure I was wearing a homemade dress. He was a young hot shot, working at a Wall Street firm right out of high school. Unfortunately, this bare description of our differences really says it all. We said goodnight pleasantly, but early.
I went back to college, got my bachelors degree, went to law school, got my J.D. I let my hair grow out, and chose a more conventional dark blonde. In the meantime, 9/11 happened, and Adam lost a number of colleagues in the attack on the World Trade Center. He joined the New York National Guard a short time later, as an enlisted. He finished his undergraduate degree, and then did his officer training. By the time I met Adam again, he had already been through one deployment in Afghanistan.
We became Facebook friends during his deployment. We still had our mutual friends, and Facebook is ideal for reconnecting you with people on the periphery of your social circle, your past, or both. He says that he particularly enjoyed my descriptions of the eight-course Thanksgiving feast I cooked for my family.
What can I say? We started hanging out when he got back, it's hard to know exactly when it turned into dating. It's funny and sad how superficial and ideological differences can keep people apart. I've probably been more guilty than most when it comes to letting ideology determine who I'm friends with. I'm glad we both grew enough to get past those differences, I'm just sorry now that it took ten years.
