Chapter 4: the rollercoaster of preparation

Towards the middle of that next week, it became clear that Tim was definitely coming to visit on Saturday because he was working non-stop to get all his editing done and making good progress. I kept him company while he worked via skype. We sent little videos back and forth about what we were doing. He had just gotten his new piano and was so excited about it. I swooned some more over this clip.

We talked a lot about our families that week. I learned that most of the people in his Christmas video were his immediate family: he has six brothers and sisters. I tried to learn all their names and ages.

We switched back and forth between French and English in our conversation. We kept finding out even more things we had in common and were less and less surprised by it. 

Somehow, Anna was fine with me inviting Tim to stay at our house over the weekend. 

More than once I had a reality check that he was a stranger that I met on the internet, and this could seem very shady. 

It was totally shady! And unsafe. And weird.

My one recourse was that Tim had recently attended a photography retreat/workshop with some acquaintances of mine in Colorado, and I figured if they could spend a weekend in a house with him and come out of it unscathed, I was probably safe.  Still,  I put some mace in my bedside table and commissioned Anna to not leave me alone with him until we both agreed he was harmless.

And I made a lot of plans. I planned out as many activities for us as I could that involved public places,  so if our meeting was a total social trainwreck, we wouldn't be stuck at my house staring at the walls. I decided that no matter what I thought of him after I met him, we would still have a nice weekend. Even if we decided to never see each other again. 

It was definitely a hard and strange time of preparation, being excited to meet Tim but fearful of the unknown. Hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.  It was just odd what we were doing, how we were starting this friendship. I had never wanted to start a relationship online and felt embarrassed about heading that direction. This was the kind of thing people snickered about, including me. 

A whole week of this, and before I knew it my guest bedroom was prepared, it was Friday night, and Tim sent me this picture:

Seventeen photo-shoots finished in 5 days. All so he could come meet me. This was so endearing. I got the impression from his actions that he wasn't afraid of hard work or making a bold move to pursue me.

He said he would be in Kansas City by Saturday evening, and I was fully ready to give him a chance.

...

And then he went and tweeted this picture of himself.

Chapter 3: the most awkward phone call in the world history of dating

He said he would call around 9pm, and I've learned since then that he's always on time for everything. My phone rang at 8:58pm.

"Hello?"

"Hi, is this Bethany?"

His voice was...higher than I had anticipated. I cringed. 

"Yeah. How's it going, Tim?"

We hobbled through an incredibly awkward conversation. We talked about the weather in Chicago, and then in Kansas City. We both had snow. We talked about church since it was Sunday. I forget what else we talked about. Maybe his brother's job? Finally, trying to get it over with as soon as possible, I turned the conversation to his trip to Kansas City.

"So, you think you want to come down?"

"Oh, I hadn't really thought about it much. It could be fun, though, right?"

What? Was he a total flake already?

"Yeah, Kansas City's a really fun place. There's tons of cool neighborhoods. I love it a lot."

"I have some friends who live there too. They've been trying to get me to come visit."

"You'd have plenty of people to see."

I didn't even know what I wanted to say. The last thing I wanted to do was talk him into coming. It was his idea in the first place! I never asked him to come. He was already frustrating me.

"The thing is, I'm leaving for France next Tuesday to spend Christmas with my family...and I have seventeen photo-shoots to edit and mail out before I can go. I'm just not sure I'll be able to get it all done  in time to spend a weekend in Kansas City before leaving for France."

What the hell.

"Well, that sure sounds like a ton of work you've got there."

"But hey, I might be able to get it done! If I don't come this weekend, it'll be a long time before I can get away. As soon as I get back to Chicago, I'm booked the first three weekends in January shooting weddings. So I really hope I can make it."

What wedding photographer is booked for the entire month of January?! Who even gets married in January?!

"Okay...have you...do you have any place to stay while you're here?"

"Uhh...no...like I said, I hadn't really planned that far."

"Right, of course. I was just wondering because...my roommate and I have this sort of guest bedroom, and, well, I haven't asked her, but maybe if she's okay with having a houseguest...you could probably stay with us."

"Hey, thanks for the offer. I really hope I can get everything finished up in time."

"Sure, absolutely. However it works out will be great."

We wrapped up the conversation and said goodbye.  Then I told Amy that judging from that phone call, I didn't really feel like I wanted him to come anyway and spent all night trying to figure out why the hell his voice was so high on the phone when it was obviously a full baritone or bass in his Facebook videos.

Many thanks to Tim for allowing me to include this. A ridiculous college roommate video shenanigan made me cry laughing. Our first phone call may have been terrible, but I still wanted to be friends with the guy in the videos.  We just needed to get passed our nerves...and he needed to get through an ungodly amount of editing before we could start having fun together.

Chapter 2 of the Tim and Bethany love story.

I'd like to take a pause before I get into this and spell out why I'm doing this.
For starters, my parents' story of connection is very precious to me. It's my history and it informs my values. I love it. It tells me who I want to be. Ergo, I expect my love story to be important to my children, so I need to write it down. Secondly, I put my faith in a God who is mighty and loving and very, very detailed. I believe that He is on my side and He fights for me and my dreams. I believe that He orchestrated impossible circumstances to give me the wonderful husband that I'd been dreaming about since I was young and I think He can make your unlikely if not impossible dreams come true too.

Now, after that first initial email contact with Tim, I took a deep breath and gave myself a pep-talk. How many other people in this world look great by their web profiles? It's the easiest thing in the world to create: pick a flattering photo, write something witty, add some credentials, and that's it. I decided to not get my hopes up.
 However, the more we talked, the more we realized that we had everything in common. The similarities between our stories just kept piling up, right down to having horrible teachers in second grade who made us afraid of and hate school. We both had short furlough experiences in the USA that led us to believe living in America was a utopian experience. We were both middle children.

Emails begot g-chatting, which begot Facebook friendship, which begot Twitter following, which begot texting. I was studying him, and finding all good things. Specifically this video he created of his family at Christmastime
 
Behind my computer screen, I swooned. I would've married him just for his sweet family at that point.

These little bits and pieces of his life experience that I was able to catch through social media were integral in our early friendship. I knew all the words to the songs his family sang because I sang them when I was a kid. His mild yet spicy family dynamic, with swirls of French and American culture was not only incredibly attractive to me, it showed me that because of my own history, we could relate on a very basic familial level, and that was huge.

In one month we had covered all this ground, and on the Sunday that I returned home from celebrating Thanksgiving with family, Tim texted me this: "Are you busy next weekend?"

Since someone who is in Chicago should have no concern about my weekend plans in Kansas City, this was out of the ordinary. I remember being in my room, and staring at my phone wondering if I was ready to meet this guy and risk a potentially very awkward experience to move the friendship passed the 500 mile hiccup we had going on.

"I don't think so. What's up?" And I waited for his response. For forty-five minutes I waited. I checked that it sent, and it had. I waited longer. I agonized that he had changed his mind. I agonized that his phone wasn't working. Oh, those forty five minutes.

And then finally: "Sorry, I'm in the middle of a photo-shoot. I was thinking maybe I might come down to KC."
Gosh, that feeling was weird. He was so bold I wasn't sure what to do. Why would he travel all this way to meet me? He was probably one of those socially special types. Or was he perfect? I couldn't know yet, I'd never even talked to him on the phone. The possibility was exciting, but also frightening.

"That could be cool."
"How about I call you tonight and we talk it over?"
"Sounds good."

Then I walked into the hallway and told my roommate, and we screamed like little girls.

I just need you all to understand one thing:

Something wonderful has happened. There are two individuals in this world who have reached a crux in their aging process and now look EXACTLY THE SAME! Those two people are:

My Uncle Bob                                                              Jerry Seinfeld

My dear Uncle Bob and Jerry Seinfeld.  I'm so excited about this.
I should tell you a little bit about my Uncle Bob (since you all know about Jerry Seinfeld). Uncle Bob has a Ph.D. in Fisheries and Allied Aquaculture, which makes him a fish doctor. Who knew that fish had their own doctors?
Uncle Bob likes to doll out fish facts on Facebook. Ask him anything, he'll know!
Hey Uncle Bob, is it true that fish swim differently during a full moon?

I distinctly remember going on a walk with him once when I was eight years old. I couldn't figure out why he was so far ahead of me, so I tried to take exactly the same number of steps as he did so I could keep up. The problem was that his legs were twice as long as my height back then.  He is married to my Aunt Bev, the synchronized ice-skater. As you can imagine, these two are quite the pair.
Their daughter, Allyson, is 3 days older than me. We thought this was so cool and, for the majority of our childhood, fancied that it legitimatized us as twins. But then, by the same mysterious powers that Uncle Bob and Jerry Seinfeld ended up looking the same, Allyson and I ended up looking dramatically un-twin-like.

Such is life. 

we're moving!

And now for a post where I don't overthink my life too much and just tell you what's new:
We're moving in January. In Chicago, also known as the Windy City, where the wind chill is known to cut through layers of wool and leather, straight down to souls, and makes eyes water not just because it's a physiological reflex, but because being outside in that weather just makes you sad. It's going to be great!

The first time I came to visit Tim in Chicago, we spent a Sunday afternoon at a dear family friend's home in Oak Park. As we were driving through this neighborhood, the old architecture turned me into a rubber neck and I suddenly piped up: "Where are we right now?!".
"My mom grew up here," Tim answered.
That's a valuable statement for a guy who was raised in France and didn't come to the states to live until he was 18. This neighborhood has rich history for him. I find this so fascinating; my mother-in-law grew up marinated in the culture of Oak Park, then moved to France, fell in love, and raised her children there. Without even realizing it, she must have continued to live and teach cultural norms specific to Oak Park to her children, and when Tim decided to go to college in Chicago and encountered his mom's old neighborhood, he felt like a certain amount of "home" was there too.  I loved it.

Tim's parents own the place we live in now and we've been renting from them. It's been great, but now that Tim's brother and sister in law are expecting a little one, they need these three bedrooms and finished basement more than we do, and we want to be closer to the city for work anyway. The first place we looked was Oak Park. After seeing a couple of duds and getting discouraged, I got a call back from a building management company that had advertised an apartment with lots of windows. We went to see it, and fell in fast, optimistic, googly eyed love. We do that a lot.

This is the building; a concave structure with the ethereal light of heaven shining down into everyone's homes and hearts.

This is that wind I was telling you about. Flattering, no?

There was a problem: we saw the apartment at the beginning of November and couldn't move in until end of January. We knew it would be gone by then, so I called up the building manager and expressed my undying love and affection for her apartment and begged her to please call us in January if another one came open. She must have found my begging to be charming because she replied that they might hold it for us if we put in an application fast enough. So we did and we were approved. We decided to go see the apartment again and think realistically about living without a dishwasher or in-unit laundry, on the third floor without an elevator. It turns out that modern inventions can't trump natural light and deep, deep closets or free radiator heat.

This is our new place:

so cute

This right here is just the most adorable moment. Tim's grandmother, affectionately known to her family as Mamie Suzanne, turns the corner into her 80th birthday party, shocked at the huge crowd gathered in a little church to celebrate her.

Mamie Suzanne is the matriarch of a community of Christians living in Grenoble, France. Her son (my father in law) now pastors the church that her husband planted in 1967, and the congregation loves and respects her so much.

At her party, everyone who wanted to share got up and told stories of how Mamie Suzanne had blessed and encouraged them over the years, and helped them to better understand the love of God. She's already left such a great legacy in her wake.

I love grandparents. I have four of them, which is unusual and incredible and a huge deal on its own, so I can't believe my fortune to have another sweet grandmother in my life now. I will meet her for the first time this Christmas when Tim and I get to France to celebrate. Parties!!

my coffee snobbery knows no bounds

One of the things I miss most about Kansas City is all the delectable coffee shops I had within 10 minutes of my house in midtown. I'm talking about the kind where the good folks behind the counter were career baristas and barely thought me worthy of a second glance unless I dropped a fiver in their tip jar, and I never had that much cash. I knew my place in those shops. I'd smile and order something easy, knowing that even the spare drips from their high end espresso machines could stop me in my tracks as I scampered out of their way with my Americano to find a table just so I could keep breathing in the rich coffee air and let it infuse my clothes for a pick-me-up later in the day.

I would say it's my one guilty pleasure, but I have lots of guilty pleasures, so I won't.

There is nothing of the sort here in Wheaton, and that's usually fine. But sometime I get a hankering for expensive espresso and Caribou and Starbucks just can't deliver. Woe is me. My life is so hard.

Tim and I have an unspoken rule that whenever we do a photo-shoot in downtown Chicago, we get a date in the city afterwards.  Last week we stumbled up Caffe Streets, and melted a little inside.  

It was this good:

Thank you. Thank you. And once again; I thank you. Latte art is the way to my heart.