My husband and I are celebrating the ninth anniversary of our wedding tomorrow. We’re high school sweethearts who sometimes act more like quarrelsome siblings — we did, in essence, grow up together.
I first set eyes on Austin a little more than 16 years ago, in April, during soccer season. I caught sight of that tall, blonde drink of water on the field from my vantage point in the stands and that was it.
I had a penchant for stalking boys (just ask my other adolescent crushes), so I spent the next four months “running into” Austin at Taco Time, his place of summer employment, or at his house (my best friend was dating his younger brother and I was the frequent third wheel). He finally succumbed to my charms and asked me out on our first date: dinner at Garfield’s in south Des Moines on August 21st, 1998.
Now here we are, with a life together more rich than we could have ever imagined as teenagers.
However, when it comes to traditional romantic occasions, such as our anniversary or Valentine’s Day, our mutual efforts leave more than a little room for improvement. There was the first year, when Austin attempted to frame our wedding vows but ended up slicing off the tip of his nose when the glass in the frame tipped out while we was cleaning it. The experience must have been particularly scarring (figuratively AND literally — just take a close look at his nose), because that was probably the last time we exchanged anniversary gifts.
That said, I scrounged up a little something this year to commemorate our 9th year of matrimony. But if I’m being perfectly honest, the only reason I have any gift at all is because I was researching children’s book illustrator Sophie Blackall today for another blog post I’m working on.
Blackall is the artist behind such fantastic books as “Big Red Lollipop” and the Ivy and Bean chapter book series, in addition to many others. Her Chinese ink and watercolor images are amazingly detailed and incredibly distinctive, making her one of my all-time favorite illustrators. Thus, you can imagine the happy dance I did when I discovered she has an ETSY SHOP!!! where she sells incredibly reasonably priced prints of some of her amazing illustrations.
Many of the prints are from a fascinating collection of drawings illustrating actual Missed Connections Craigslist classifieds from New York City, which were published as a book, “Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found.” Others are simply beautiful images celebrating love. Here’s the one that’s en route to my house:
It’s a sentiment about our relationship I feel quite profoundly; if things hadn’t lined up just so, we never would have met, fallen in love and brought our beautiful girls into this world. I love you, Austin.
Going on a Book Hunt 