Spring Break Memory

It was 1999. I was a senior in college. I had just ended a silly “relationship” with someone, if you can call it that, where basically I thought it was something more than it was, and well, you know the drill. I was a little done with boys for the moment, to say the least. I was really looking forward to spending some time with my best girlfriends on a trip to Daytona Beach. My friend Rachel’s parents owned a house down there, so it was a perfect place to go. I remember being there one of the very first days, and hearing about how Rachel had invited an old friend she grew up with to stay at the house, and how he was also bringing a friend. And I remember the first time I saw that friend. It was kind of early one morning, and all of us girls were getting ready to walk across the street to the beach, and he was getting ready to go fish (imagine that!) He was sitting on the back of his buddy’s truck bed, shirt off, sunglasses on, and before I knew it, he was pulling away for the day. That’s my first memory of Wes. It might be kind of cool if I could say that the rest of that week in Florida, our friendship grew, and we hung out all week, etc, etc. But that’s not exactly what happened. Instead, I had a great time with my friends, and really didn’t see much of Wes the rest of that week, and before we could blink, as it always does, Spring Break had ended and it was time to go back to school.


When we got back, this boy who I had literally never seen on campus before that I can remember, all of a sudden started showing up everywhere. One day I walk into the gym. I hear a whistle. Of course who, when they hear a whistle, doesn’t first wonder, was that for me? So that’s what I wonder, and then slowly look around. And there he is again, lifting weights across the room. It got my attention. He was really really cute. And very tan still from our week in Florida. So anyways, a few more small meetings like this occur over the next few weeks, and before I know it we are in that wonderful whirlwind where you barely need to eat or sleep because for a little bit you feel like that person is all you need to survive. And I’m falling fast. Too fast probably, if I had to admit it. And I’m sure people warned me. But look where we ended up. Fourteen years later, almost thirteen years of marriage, two wonderful kids – a life with that boy from the beach. We’ve made it. So every year when March comes around, and college kids everywhere are headed somewhere warm, I can’t help but think back to that one Spring Break, where maybe, just maybe, if our paths had directed us different ways, we might never have met.