Remembering Our First Date
As we celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary
If you’ve been reading along, you may have noticed that I’ve barely told you about my wife.
After all, it’s Fatherhood Dojo, not Husbandhood Dojo.
Except, they are both true.
For me, being a husband in the midst of parenting has its own flavor of learning edges and practicing consciously.
We’ll come back to that another day, but for now, I am in celebration and gratitude mode. This week we celebrated our 11th anniversary.
Her name is Suki. We met in 2008.
My roommate had invited her over and they were hanging in our backyard by the fire pit.
Before I saw her, I heard her laugh. A BIG, enthusiastic laugh. The kind of laugh that fills a room. And makes the walls creak. And knocks on the house next door for a cup of sugar.
When I walked outside, I was drawn in by her big smile. If I were a squirrel, she might have swallowed me whole.
As she tells the story, I won her over with my combination of:
sharing a hip-hop dance move I learned that week in class,
making her laugh (possibly related to the dance move),
and then pressing her in conversation to open up more about the deeper experience of a trip she had taken, beyond the surface level details.
The next day I asked my roommate for Suki’s phone number.
On our first date:
We met at a playground. This one in fact:
We walked down the block on our way to nowhere in particular, and as we came upon different totems on our path, we were inspired to each take a turn leading the other in… well… I don’t know what to call it. But I’ll explain.
At the first—a statue of lions outside a San Francisco home—I invited her to join me in lion’s pose.
In case you are not familiar, this is a yoga pose intended to release heat from the body (like stress or anger). We crouched down on the sidewalk, placed our hands down flat on the ground, fingers pointing backwards towards our body, and lifting our heads with our eyes crossed and tongue hanging out, made the sound “Ahhhhhh!!!!!” three times.
You know. Like you would expect on most first dates.
NOTE: She didn’t waver. She went right along with the lion pose invitation and therefore passed whatever test I was giving her.
Next, we got to a special spot of stone benches and potted plants where she taught me a chant that included the sound, “su-ki-no” much like her name. I honestly can’t remember any of the other words, but the felt sense was that she welcomed me into a very deep part of her spiritual life wherein she experienced her elder self directly.
Very cool.
The date culminated at another park, where we hula hooped with a stranger named Candy for about an hour.
These first date elements were not just seeds for our relationship, but they spoke to the aspects of our souls that felt (and still feel) most connected: our playfulness and our spiritual growth ✨
After going through many ups and downs in our shared journey as a couple, I am grateful to not just remember this beginning, but to feel that original connective tissue resurfacing in glimpses these days as our kids move through toddler and pre-pre-teen stages. Resurfacing sometimes alongside our kids, and sometimes on our own.
How about you?
In the comments below, please share something about your partner that you are grateful for.
And for bonus points, what can you recall from the beginning of your relationship that you find in pockets of today and/or would like to nourish some more in your partnership? 🔥
PS: Thank you supporters of my recent IndieGogo campaign for my illustrated book, Hiding Inside a Man. We passed my goal!
PPS: I almost took this week off from writing and was going to write as much to show off how good I am at self-care. And then I got inspired and wanted to share the love I am tending to in my life. Gratitude may be the most effective self-care after all ; )
Aww, I love this so much, Matthew!
The thing I'm grateful for about my wife: she holds me accountable to be the best man I can be. I wasn't always so grateful! 😆