Wait, what?

Last week was a big week. It was the seven year anniversary of my mom's valve replacement surgery. The whole ordeal was one lucky break after another, starting with a blue snow cone at the St. John's Church Festival at some point in July of 2002. For those new readers, she was running amok at the church festival, in search of BINGO and a blue snow cone. Somehow during her quest, she got a Charlie Horse and ended up passing out. Weird, right? She ends up going to the emergency room, where they hook her up to all sorts of machines to try to figure out why she passed out. Everything seemed ok and she wanted to go home. Luckily for us, one of the doctors took one last look at her EKG and noticed something funny. Funny turned out to be a bi-cuspid rather than tri-cuspid valve and perhaps the reason for her "episode" at the festival. Once this was diagnosed, a lot of years of random shortness of breath made perfect sense. It wasn't that she was out of shape, although she'd be the first to tell you that exercise isn't one of her favorite things, it was that her heart wasn't working the way that it should. The solution to this problem was that she had to have a valve replacement. She elected for a pig valve and set about getting her surgery scheduled for August.

At this point, I was in Columbus, living it up with my friends after graduating in June. I was working as an intern at SBC Advertising as well as working at the Columbus Zoo and babysitting on the side. I had also started dating this guy named Nick. He was sort of clueless, so I didn't have high hopes for the whole situation, especially since we'd been talking/hanging out since February (reminder: it is now July/August) and we had yet to figure out what we were. Wait - I had figured it out, he hadn't. Anyway, my mom asked me what my schedule looked like as I was planning to come home for the week. It turned out that my friend was hosting a housewarming party on August 4th and that guy from Dayton was planning to come. Leave it to my mom, she schedules her valve replacement on August 6th so that I could still go to the party.

It was at this party that Nick's friend Zach uttered those fateful words..."So are you two boyfriend and girlfriend or what?". I looked at Nick, he looked at me and he said "yeah, I guess so". That was it. It was before he graduated from college and before my first job. It was before we owned our own vehicles and before my first apartment. It was before I realized how big those words would be and how much it meant that we had been defined as a "we". It was before our first fight...technically. I say technically because I had yelled at him prior to us being official, but since we weren't an us, it wasn't OUR fight to fight. It was before we met parents and granparents and knew life stories. It was before all of my stories included him and before it was taken for granted that he'd be with me for events and celebrations. It was before mortgage payments, vet bills, 401ks, gym memberships, new houses, friends, weddings and babies. It was before I understood how people married their best friends and what it meant to find your someone and to be the other half of an &.

I mentioned this to Nick the other day - that it had been seven years since that fateful night. His response, "Really? 7 years? huh..." and then he went back to playing with his computer. Yep. Seven years. Time flys when you're having fun...and when you're a little clueless.