Choosing Mr. Right

Restaurant menus make me anxious. So do college course catalogs and choose-your-own-adventure books. Oh, and stores. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone shopping for much-needed clothes, approached the cashier with an armload of items, and talked myself out of all of them before it was my turn to pay.

This inability to make decisions, coupled with my other fatal flaw of closed-off emotional brokenness, did not bode well for my hope to one day meet someone, somehow get close to him, and maybe even marry him.

I bemoaned my predicament to various friends and roommates throughout the years. If my calculations are correct, from my first freshman apartment to my final bachelorette pad, I experienced forty-eight different roommates. At least forty-five of them were more excitable than I was. I stood by and watched as many of them met boys, ramped up their giddiness, and decided—with little to no effort, it seemed—to officially attach themselves to these boys for the rest of their very existences. I marveled.

“Don’t worry, Amy,” they’d say. “Someday you’ll meet the one, and you’ll feel all giddy, and you’ll just know. It’s just something you know.”

I had my doubts.

My history with guys was about as sparse as my history with just knowing anything. In high school I rolled my eyes at the hormonal currents whirling around me. In college I continued to roll my eyes, but with less conviction as time ticked on. All this eye rolling did not bring the men flocking, and I graduated with zero practical experience in how to be part of a couple.

This pattern had to change and I knew it. So I took a deep breath, clawed my way out of my fortress of solitude, and (horror!) tried to reveal my interest and availability. It was terrifying, but it yielded results.

I dated actual guys. One of them was much too perfect. He pursued and I grew sore from repeatedly pinching myself. And then, when I could no longer demurely hold off the moment, I was so worried about kissing him wrong that I probably really kissed him wrong. But the ice was broken. The thaw had begun.

The next guy was much too imperfect. This somehow made for better kissing—and easier breathing in general—and I finally came to see what all the couplehood fuss was about. I could only hope my newfound knowledge would someday be put to the right use.

Enter guy number three. The just-right one.

When I walked into Baskin Robbins for our blind date, I immediately liked what I saw. Approachable smile, studious glasses, head full of dark hair. When he stood up he got another point—he was delightfully tall. Then we started talking and the points kept coming. He had a degree. And an actual job. And a sense of humor. And the background of a hard-working Idaho farm boy. I even liked his junker car (unmaterialistic!). We talked until they kicked us out. Then we made plans to talk some more.

The weeks and the talking went on. We hiked orange autumn trails, discovered Italian restaurants, and watched TV in his meager but cozy apartment. He treated me to an elegant evening of the Nutcracker and The Roof, prepared a gourmet meal on Valentine’s Day, and drove me through a blizzard to his hometown, where he was charmingly kind to his mother. He filled up many of my days and most of my thoughts.

But still, I mused, how on earth can anyone know?

One day in late spring we looked at rings for fun and because we could. A growing sense of panic made me want to throw up my Coldstone afterward. What were we playing at? Who was I to mess around with something so serious? We stepped back. I fretted. I waited for the giddiness. I prayed. I wondered, Is this stupor of thought a Stupor of Thought? Or just my everyday stupor?

And then I did what desperate times called for. I asked my grandma if my mom had been sure when she dated my dad. Had she just known?

 

“Heavens no, Amy! She drove your poor dad crazy. She never could decide things, that girl. And you know, you’re just like her.”

In retrospect, Grandma wasn’t the most objective sounding board I could have chosen. She’d been pleading with me for years to marry whatever walked by in a tie. But she knew my mom like no one else had, and her words somehow helped me know myself. Maybe giddiness wasn’t a universal litmus test for knowing you’d found the one. Maybe I simply loved a good man who loved me back, and I’d rather be with him than without him.

We were married on a clear October morning. My veil caught the sunlight; my happiness was real. Of course kneeling at the altar hadn’t changed my personality, and I had a moment there—waiting alone in my wedding dress at the edge of the parking lot while he brought around his (our!) car—a “What on earth did I just do?” moment. But the feeling was awe, not regret. Something inside had unclenched. Already the future felt right.

It kept feeling right on our honeymoon on the Oregon coast, as I watched him harvest mussels on the rocky beach and then prepare a meal of lemony pasta in our tiny bed-and-breakfast cottage. And as we sat in our rental car outside a row of shops, listening to the rain and Norah Jones.

It all felt right in our newlywed apartment, when we were snowed in for three days straight over my birthday and I couldn’t think of a nicer way to celebrate.

And then again the day I had my first post-wedding migraine, and instead of dragging myself off the bed, groping my way to the medicine cabinet, and gulping down pills while the pain pulsed across my skull, I squinted up to see him at my bedside with pills, water, a cold washcloth, and an ice pack. The sight brought tears to my eyes.

Then years later, on an evening after a regular day from hell, I had angrily dumped an entire pan of failed rice down the disposal as crying babies slobbered on my feet and traffic kept him away. My brilliant move cost us an hour of his fruitless plunging and seventy unbudgeted dollars for a plumber’s house call. After he paid the bill and showed the man out, I tried to slink away to wallow in my shame, but he was there, grabbing my hand. 

“Come here,” he laughed, and he pulled me in close while I cried out my hot frustration and relief. And there it was—I just knew. It was nothing but right. I chose the right adventure.