I need to write this before I forget

My father just sat me down and made me turkey and gravy on an open-faced sandwich. We sat together eating it, and he said “Let me tell you story.” Now before I begin I would just like to add that my father and I have a complicated relationship, we butt heads often because we’re quite similar. But also because of choices he’s made that I sometimes still resent him for. So story time is not really a common occurrence, but I’m beginning to wish it was.

So he told me the story of how and why he fell in love with my mother. Parts of it I had heard before. But he told me about when she first walked into the room he told his AA long time sponsor (and yes they met through AA, those crazy cats I know lol omg tehe) and old friend (who has 80 yrs old at the time). He leaned over to him, after seeing her walk in and said “I’m going to be sleeping with her in the next day three days” and his sponsor leaned over and said “You don’t talk like that!” And hit my dad over the head with his hat. Everyone stopped. Then everyone went on with their business.

Of course my father did not sleep with my mom in three days. They became very close friends and hung out with friends as friends for almost a year before their first date. And on that date my mother made him dinner, amazing filet minon wrapped in bacon with potatoes and green beans. My father’s favorite. 

And this is where it gets good, my dad looked at me in this part of the story, his eyes slightly teary and said, “It took me a while to pinpoint why I loved her so much, and it was because I knew she was struggling; her apartment was a dump, she was moving up in her job though, and I used to tease her and say ‘Oh, so you’re a secretary’ and she firmly said, ‘I am not a secretary.’ Because she wasn’t. But she was pretty broke, we both were and making that meal probably costed her two weeks pay. And she did that for me.” He went on to say, “Your mother is so selfless, she has always made sure that all you kids and I have always had what we needed.” And I wanted to cry so much but for the sake of the situation I kept it inside. “That is why I am so in love with your mother,” he said. The ironic part was this whole conversation started because he asked me if I had a boyfriend. I wonder if he was trying to make me realize something. Then I get on facebook and someone posted a cover of “1+1” by Beyonce (basically a spectacular love song), and I was like I need to write out what just happened.

Sometimes I get so cynical and feel like I’m too mature for the cliched and the cheesy, but I think the truth of the matter is this: cliched in a sense means common, but these type of feelings, “true love” spending “forever” with someone is incidentally something that most everyone feels. Screw all the terrible stories of selfish people who mess it all up. The kind of love that lasts, it happens. I am a product of it. Never been more proud of something in my life.