Boy Meets Girl

Let me tell you a story. It’s a love story, which is the best kind, and it has this amazing twist to it that I swear you will not see coming. Like all the classic love stories that have been told through the ages, it starts like this:

Boy meets girl.

Boy is young, only twenty years old, while girl is even younger, just nineteen. Boy is a self-proclaimed dumb-ass, with a broad, infectious smile. Girl is beautiful and smart AF, though our story takes place at a time when girls were neither described as smart AF nor rewarded for being that way. Boy meets girl through mutual friends, who thought the two of them might hit it off.

And hit it off they did. Though boy nearly ruined everything by ending their first date with an off-the-cuff farewell of “see you in a year,” girl perseveres and the two keep dating. Eventually, they fall in love, in that way that you can only fall when you’re nineteen. Love isn’t blind at that age: All five senses are fully alive, burning on hormonal gasoline.

Boy joins the Army and girl follows him to Kentucky, a welcome thousand miles from their past. Baby Boy Number One makes his debut shortly thereafter. Boy becomes an officer, though his attitude is nearly his undoing on not just a few occasions. Baby Boy Number Two announces his immanent arrival so boy & girl decide to leave the military life behind and move on to the next adventure.

They say you know you’re having an adventure when you wish you were home. Boy and girl take turns working and going back to college. One class at a time, one semester at a time, exams in between graveyard shifts.  Baby Boy Number Three hits the spotlight just before boy turns twenty-eight. That’s ok, pull a chair up to the table, kid. Here, I’ll shake the fizz out of this Pepsi and you can drink it from your bottle if you’ll Just. Stop. Crying.

There are dark times, because there are always dark times. Boy starts a business. The business fails. Boy starts another business. The business fails. One heart attack. Two bankruptcies. Three kids. Four career changes. Baby Boy #1 goes down a path that he shouldn’t have, and as many times as girl throws out a lasso from her heart, she can’t rope him back in.

Now here’s where the twist comes in: Boy and girl stick it out. Boy and girl don’t leave. Regardless of whatever Shit Hurricane bares down on them, boy and girl can’t shake the feeling that something bigger than themselves is going on here. Boy meets girl with an Emotional Tool Chest that consists solely of one ball-peen hammer and a 5/8th-inch allen wrench; girl meets boy with a putty knife and a Phillips-Head screwdriver that’s stripped on top. But when they need to build a house, they don’t call it quits and live separately in tents. They go and find the tools, somehow, someway, because there’s a fucking house that needs to be built.

Girl would go on to say that “love is a commitment to a person, marriage is a commitment to a process.” Part of that process is ‘till death do us part. Does that mean boy and girl live in misery together? No, because another part of that process is loving, honoring, cherishing.

Does the story end happily? That’s not the point. The point is that the story doesn’t end.

Boy meets girl. Dad meets mom. Fifty-nine years ago today.

You should see their house.

Fifty-Nine Years Of Marriage Pairs With:  Dom Ruinart Rosé, Champagne 2004: Searching for a wine from the 1958 vintage is an unfortunately difficult task. Bordeaux wines, which age incredibly well, were not up to the task in 1958 because most of the vines were quite young, due to the devastating frost of 1956. 1958 was a notable vintage for California Cabernets, however, with the Charles Krug Vintage Select Cabernet Sauvignon having the Highest Likelihood of Not Being Vinegar In 2017. At $500 a bottle, though, I’m just not good enough a son to find out.

Besides, champagne and love go together like…like…champagne and love. Like a fifty-nine-year marriage, the Dom Ruinart Rosé is special because it’s their first since the launch of the 2002 vintage in September, 2013. The 2004 Rosé is 81% Grand Cru Chardonnay and 19% Pinot Noir. The house purposely lowered the amount of residual sugar to bring the acidity forward, and the final effect is absolutely stunning. With only 12% alcohol, there is a lightness, delicacy and grace here that is completely sublime, yet on the finish there is layer after layer of creamy complexity.