The man I married

I'm driving down the road with my parents in tow, having dropped Zeke off at school and had a leisurely latte at Starbucks. Jason left for Denver last night for a big mountain biking trip with his posse.

My phone rings. It's Kathleen.

"Can I just tell you how much I love the fact that your husband showed up on my doorstep this morning in shorts, a t-shirt, and no shoes?"

"He wasn't wearing shoes??"

"Apparently he didn't wear them the entire trip. And he was trying to put on a brave face, but he's standing there shivering in ball-shrinkingly cold weather, poor thing."

This is my husband. The crazy blue collar Aussie whose upbringing could not have been more different from my own, in just about every respect, and who I still look at from time to time and think, "how on earth did we end up together??"

Looking back over old posts, I realized I've never really written about it. So here goes.

It was December of 2003. The country was newly embroiled in the shock and awe of the Iraq war.

And I was in Costa Rica for a surfing trip.

I had taken a surfing lesson in North Carolina the previous summer, and seen Blue Crush, and was dying to learn to surf properly. So in the fall of 2003, I decided to go to Costa Rica. I sent out an email to everyone I knew to see who wanted to come. Shahira, a sorority sister from UVa., signed on, as did Carrie, a friend who I'd met when we were both bridesmaids in Michele's wedding. We decided to go to Witch's Rock Surf Camp in Tamarindo, on the western Pacific coast of CR -- primo Central American surf country.

The day we got there, we had our first surf lesson. Our teachers were Nick and Roach (a nickname, obviously). We saw Jason giving a lesson off in the distance. He had long blond hair and was about as ripped as I'd ever seen a guy.

(Jason coming up from the beach after a surf lesson)

"Surfer boys are pretty," we thought.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the surf camp (breakfast is included in the surf package). Jason was there, and was sitting with a couple of other students. We joined them and got to chatting.

He mentioned that he was from Australia, outside of Sydney, and I mentioned that I had been to Australia and adored Sydney, and there was just a vibe there. I can't explain it. It wasn't exactly love at first sight, but there was an immediate attraction and connection that was undeniable.

He asked me where I was from, and I said I lived in Atlanta, Georgia.

"You're a Georgia peach!" he said, smiling at me.

I laughed it off, but was thinking to myself, "there's something really sweet about this guy."

I had a good surf lesson that morning, and managed to get up on a bunch of waves. Afterwards, I was standing at the bar at the restaurant getting a Gatorade. Jason came up behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, and said, "you're such a beautiful thing."

"You're not so bad yourself," I replied.

And thus started a cautious vacation romance. I didn't really think much of it at first -- I figured we'd hang out, do some surfing, smooch a little, but then I'd go home and we'd go on with our lives.

But as the week went on, the intensity of the feelings between us was getting a bit overwhelming and impossible to brush off. We surfed, we talked for hours, we kissed (but nothing more), and by the end of the week, the thought of going home was very difficult to stomach. We were undeniably falling in love.

So I called the office and made up an excuse about having an ear infection and not being able to fly home ("an ear infection named Pedro!" was my friend Andrea's reaction when she heard about it) and extended my trip for another 4 days.

We went on our first actual date to a rodeo in Braselito, a town near Tamarindo.

(At the rodeo on our first real date --
you can see people sitting on the fence surrounding the bullring behind us)

And it bears noting that at the rodeo, over a week after we'd met, I still had never seen Jason wear shoes. As we were walking around, he kept feeling something brush against his lower leg as he walked. Turns out it was a wooden kebab skewer that he had stepped on and was lodged in one of his feet. He hadn't felt it.

By the time I left, we had plans for him to move up to Atlanta in a few months. He came to Georgia in April, and we spent the next year and a half figuring out how to make our relationship work while Jason spent some time in Georgia and some time in Australia.

It wasn't easy, and sometimes it still isn't. We are very, very different. And before we got engaged, I kept trying to find reasons to break up with him, because I just didn't see how we could make a life together.

But I couldn't. I love him. He's incredibly kind and friendly, he's very funny, he keeps me laughing at myself, he's affectionate. And as I've discovered, he's a wonderful father. I'll stick with him, even though he doesn't read the same books I do, is content to watch stupid punks do skateboarding tricks on Fuel TV for hours on end, and still never wears shoes.