Flowers Blossom

Another flashback of the past.  Continued from First Kiss.

Last year I began writing the accounts of our past.  I wrote about how Andrew and I met and the progression of our relationship.  I wrote about our first date and our first kiss.  I quickly got lost in school and haven't written anything of that sort for a while, but I want to get back to it.  The problem is, I am not quite sure where to start.  So here I go with a few little "clips" of my life.  Random, out of order, and probably not really of much interest to anyone else.  But ten years later I am finding that the memories are fading and I want to write them down before I lose them completely.

In my  post-mission life, I have seldom used an alarm clock.  I hate the sound they make - the jarring force of being reeled in from a peaceful slumber to an unwelcome awareness.  I much prefer to let myself wake up when I am good and ready gently letting my dreams fade into the distance as reality come back to the forefront.  Of course, once I had children, they became the ruling force in my schedule.  Since then the time on the clock has had little relevance to whether I am asleep or awake.  Before Ammon was born I worked a job that didn't start until 11:30 in the afternoon.  In that circumstance I just never needed to worry about being late.  And prior to my job, I was in school, carpooling with Andy, who picked me up at 7:15.  But having just returned home from my mission, my body was trained to awake at 6:30 every morning, and so I didn't even need an alarm clock then.

There was one morning, however, when I woke up just in time to realize that I felt lousy and that my ride was going to be there any second.  I was late, and I just couldn't bring myself to jump up and get ready for the day.  In fact it was pretty much time for Andy to be there to pick me up.  I ran upstairs just in time to tell him that I was sick and wouldn't make it to school that day.  Then I went to bed.

When I finally got up I began to putter around the house and wonder if I had made a mistake.  At this point Andy and I were friends who were quickly falling for each other, but I frankly hadn't really acknowledged that  or realized where things were going.  Of the two of us, he was definitely the one who saw our future more clearly, and knew where he wanted to take things.  The reason I felt that perhaps I had made a mistake in staying home was because I spent my morning missing him.  Going to school was my ticket to seeing him every day and I found that, despite being a little under the weather, I wanted to be with him.  I finally resigned myself to the fact that I would just have to be wait it out until the next day before I would have the luxury of talking with him again.  I restlessly continued sitting around the house, hoping to gain back some of my lost energy, and impatiently waiting for the next day to come.

That afternoon, the doorbell rang.  I was told it was for me and went to see who it was.  I met him in the dining room while wearing my pajamas and with my hair mess.  Andy stood, extending his arms towards me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

As a 30-something year old woman, I can tell you with certainty that those flowers were not a simple gesture from a friend.  But as a 20-something year old girl I wasn't quite sure.  All I new was that I had missed him.  And that I was flattered.  And that the flowers were so lovely and that Andy was kind to have thought of me.  I don't even remember what kind of flowers he brought, but I know how I felt when I saw him there and realized that he had been thinking of me.  My tummy had butterflies, my cheeks were pink and my face lit up with a smile.  And from that day on, our relationship continued to blossom.

Our Engagement