I was the boy next door that she met in high school. We met at a friend’s bonfire, and spent the following weeks getting to know one another. I invited her and her sisters over to my house to watch Lord of the Rings—it astonished me that they hadn’t seen it. Partway through one of the movies, because this was now late at night, I realized that everyone had fallen asleep. I fell asleep on Autumn’s lap. She would go for walks in the evening, and I would join her. We would wander and talk for hours and hours. I asked her dad if we could date, introduced her to my mom, and then left the state.

I think I talked to her on the phone every single day while I was gone.

When I returned home, we were both in college. I was back in our home town, and she drove up to Ferris State University to become a pharmacist. I supported her adventure as much as I could, and drove up to visit every month. Every phone call, every text conversation, would end with some kind talk about “some day.”

This “some day” involved a cat, of course, as well as being able to come home to somewhere uniquely ours. Something that we created with all the time we spent. We spent a lot of time separately, driving toward independence, degrees, credit scores, jobs, and all of those small lego-bricks. “Some Day” was the centerpiece of our relationship: what we could be. We would fantasize about coming together as something more than each of us separately.

Now we are here. Some day has arrived. We have a cat. We come home to each other. We go on adventures. She is the subject of my cooking experiments. I am her captive audience when she needs to unload.

The Romance

It was the summer of 2009 and my sister and I went to a friends bonfire. While at the bonfire we meet a boy named Curtis. At the time I wasn’t particularly fond of Curtis. In fact, when our friends would get together and I knew Curtis was going to be there, I wouldn’t want to go. However, my sister would drag me to the hangouts. Eventually, after hanging out with him for a few weeks, I learned we had a lot in common and he wasn’t as bad as I originally thought. In the next couple months he would join me on my walks and we would hang out and talk for hours. Pretty soon, he became my best friend.

 The following spring he asked me to be his girlfriend. Then, 3 months into our relationship he moved to Virginia with his dad. We talked on the phone for hours and longed for him to move back home. A year and a half later he moved back home and shortly thereafter I moved an hour north to start college. The next 5 years while we were in school in different cities, we would continue to call each other every day and visit each other every other weekend (he would visit me once a month and I would come home once a month). The distance was hard, but we got through it because we knew that someday the distance would be gone and we would be able to come home to each other every night.

Curtis's Story

Autumn's Story

The Proposal

I had just spent a week in Guatemala partaking in a medical mission trip. The day I traveled home I had spent 9 hours on a bus and 14 hours on a plane or in an airport. I was exhausted by the time I landed in Grand Rapids. Curtis picked me up from the airport and took me home. When we got home he wanted to sit up and talk, but I was exhausted and just wanted to take a shower and go to bed. I got up to go to bed and he asked me to come back to the living room. I turned around and he was down on one knee, ring in hand. He talked about how he missed me so much the past week and how he never wanted to have to miss me again. Then he asked me to marry him. I of course said yes, and he gave me the ring. We hugged for a long while and I was finally able to crawl into bed. Not long after I got in bed, he comes into the room and says, “I did it wrong, I gave you the wrong ring. I was supposed to give you the big one, wasn’t I?” (He had given me the wedding band originally). So he takes the wedding band back, grabs the engagement ring, gets down on one knee, and again asks me to marry him.

I have loved him for ten years. From high school sweethearts to marriage, we have grown so much with each other. He is my best friend, and I an honored that I get to be his wife and spend the rest of my live loving him.