I’ve always loved to ask people about their love stories—how they met their partner, what love means to them, or how relationships shift and change. I compiled these stories in a notebook and I thought, after all these years, it would be nice to share those words with others.
My Grandma Sparkly:
“We met when I was 18 and he was 31. He was in the army. Wait, let me start over.
I remember I was at a baseball game with some guy who I can’t remember now. We went to the bar after for drinks–it was the popular place to be at the time. I was friends with the bartender, that’s how I got all the drinks. There were so many people in uniform there, I honestly don’t even remember seeing him. But this is how he told the story: he said that when I walked into the bar, he stared at me, then looked to his buddies at the table and said ‘that’s the girl I’m going to marry.’ He got my number from my friend, the bartender, and called me the next day. I told him I wouldn’t go out with him until he met my mother. So he did. It was 1943. Two years after the war started. Things were different then. If you married someone, you did everything you could to stay together. You worked out your differences and continued to love. Divorce? I never thought of it. Murder? Oh, several times. We were married 53 years.”
My dad, about my mom:
“I fell in love with her strength. After everything that woman went through, she chose to persevere. It took my breath away.”
My old boss, about her husband:
“He sat in front of my in homeroom. He asked to borrow a quarter so I gave him one. The next day he paid me back. No boys ever do that. That’s how I knew. At the dance that week he asked me to be his partner. My best friend cried because she knew he liked me more, and there was nothing she could do.”
Our elderly Italian family friend, to my mom:
“When you’re married…you’re going to fall in and out of love with your partner. Some days you are going to struggle and think it’s going to end. Just remember that everyone goes through good times and bad times. Take a step back, take a deep breath, and everything will be ok. You will fall in love with them again.”
A friend I met while studying abroad:
“There is no perfect person out there. People are so worried about finding a soulmate–they are always searching for the “right” one. But that’s not it. There are going to be two people who make it right.”
My mentor, about his wife:
“We worked together at the New York State Office of Mental Health. Mary hired me, she was my boss. She’s always been the boss.”
My friend from college, about her parents:
“My mom was in the Peace Corps in Thailand and my dad was in the United States. My dad would take my mom’s aunt to the grocery store and he would take audio tapes of the trip. Then, he’d send them to my mom overseas to she could listen. It was so sweet. And, of course, he wrote her lots of letters.”
My friend, about her baby:
“I know that some people think it’s odd that I co-sleep with my baby. But when I wake up next to him, that’s when I feel most alive. Feeling his love, it brings me life and it makes me strong.”
My Grandma Emily:
Grandma: “We met at Big Boys.”
Me: “What’s a Big Boy?”
Grandma: “You know–the drive-in restaurant. He pulled up next to me in the car. I told him my phone number and he wrote it down quickly on the dashboard and then erased it so his buddy couldn’t see it. He’d memorized the number so quickly. He was so good to me, always picking me up and taking me on dates. There was something funny–one time we went out with his work friends from Greece and I got so sick on their alcohol. He drove me to his aunt’s house and I threw up all over the driveway. And it was the first time I had met her.”
A friend:
“Marry someone who wants to marry you. It sounds simple, but plenty of people feel pressured or are trying to make another person happy. Take it from me, someone who is getting a divorce. Marriage is important….waiting is ok. And hey, never getting married, that’s ok too.”
A story two employees told me at a Payless in Austin, TX:
Daniel: “Oh you see, I worked at Payless. One of the other works told me ‘one day, a girl is going to walk through those doors and knock your mustache off.’ I laughed.”
Olga: “When I was little, I had an amazing teacher in Mexico named Norma Robles. Since the kids picked on me and she took care of me, I always wrote my name as Olga F. Robles. Over and over and over. I practiced writing my name that way every day. Later, when I was living with my mom in the U.S., she suggested I work at the Payless Shoe Store. She said a nice man ran the store and gave people jobs who couldn’t speak English.”
Daniel: “So Olga came into the store and I gave her the job. I didn’t know any Spanish and she hardly knew any English, But I knew I wanted to be with her.”
Olga: “He was the wonderful man at the store. And his name was Daniel Robles…..like the name I had been writing all along. I really could be Olga Robles. We believe in fate. We believe that things are meant to be and always find a way.”
