Derek and my First Year Wedding Anniversary was last week! So I thought I would tell you how we met. I think it's a pretty cool story, and it starts in Switzerland.
In 2003 Derek traveled Europe alone, meeting and making friends along his journey. Just like Derek, my close friends, Alishea and Katie, set out on a similar adventure to travel Europe. While staying in a hostel in Switzerland the three crossed paths and became fast friends; sharing stories about themselves and creating more stories together to tell friends and family back home. After a month or so of traveling Ali and Katie returned to Miami with photographs and stories to tell; many of both were about and of Derek. The night they shared these stories with me was the night I was really introduced to Derek (not including a post card Ali sent me from Switzerland that mentioned their new friend).
In late March of 2007, I created a MySpace account and was searching though “friends of friends” to find people to add to my contacts. I came across Derek’s profile page in Ali’s group of Top Friends. Remembering the stories about Derek, I looked through his profile (to verify this was the same guy, of course) and on April 29th I sent him an email. The email said, “…I'm Ali's friend Heather from Miami. You seem to be my kind of person. So I just wanted to say hi…” In which he replied, “…Any friend of Ali's has to be quite all right, so I'm sure you’re my kind of person too. Your son is adorable by the way...” And that was the beginning of it all.
From April till about November Derek and I sent long pages of emails back and forth about our day, our lives and who we were - really getting to know each other. Along with the lengthy, flirty emails we also exchanged pictures of sunrises and sunsets. Being on the East coast in Miami, I sent the sunrises. With Derek on the West coast in the Bay Area he, of course, sent the beautiful sunsets. Because of these exchanges, sunrises and sunsets hold a very special place in our hearts. We also exchanged gifts and music in the mail; he was the one to introduce me to my all-time favorite band Steven Kellogg and the Sixers.
It was around mid November when we exchanged phone numbers. Afraid to mess up the bond we’d created over the Internet we cautiously proceeded with text messages for the better part of a month. The night Derek actually called me still reminds me of being in middle school. The nervousness, the butterflies, the screaming girls - no really, he called on a “Girls Grey’s Anatomy Night”, and all craziness broke lose. Carina and Chrissy actually tried to wrestle me for the phone because I wasn’t going to pick up (and I didn’t). Eventually I pushed Carina and Chrissy out of the house, said goodnight to my Mom and walked outside. I paced around the driveway for a good 15 minutes and then made the call. Derek was charming and funny, as he was in his emails, and we stayed up all night talking, laughing and discussing what we thought the other person might have sounded like. Which wasn’t a big deal to someone on the West coast, but 4AM on the East coast with classes the next day… oh who am I kidding, it was totally worth it.
You know, many people think meeting people on the Internet is, well, lame, but honestly thank God for it. Not only did it allow Derek and I to connect across the country, but who can honestly say that they have their first interactions and conversations written down somewhere? I’m so happy to be able to say, we do.
…In a way, we did meet in Switzerland, that’s where our unexpected journey began.
…In a way, we did meet in Switzerland, that’s where our unexpected journey began.
And a year ago we got hitched... but that is a whole other blog post.
Happy Anniversary, Love.
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