Italian Bread

When you came to my apartment to take me on our first official date 11 years ago, you greeted me with one hand behind your back.

But instead of flowers, you handed me a long loaf of sweet Italian bread. You apologized for it not being flowers and explained that being around flower stands makes you uneasy--they being so foreign and feminine, and you being so...man's man.

Do you know I kept the paper wrapping from that loaf in my scrap-booking file?


We road the BART to a mall in San Francisco where I hinted that I wanted some Haagen Dazs so that you could do the chivalrous thing and buy me some. But you said something to the effect that ice cream is junk food and no one needs the overpriced, extra calories. Wrong thing to say to a young woman susceptible to the reigning cultural aesthetics of being too thin!


And then I hinted that you could buy me some nice token of your affection, nothing expensive, but something meaningful. You had no idea what to get and we spent the rest of the time looking around the cheap jewelry kiosks. I found something I liked, but by that time, the stands were closing. We went back empty handed.

You walked me to my apartment and I expected a lingering goodbye. Instead you said, "Bye", and turned right around and left! How abrupt. How sudden. How rude!


I guess first dates are not the best indicators of the future of a relationship. Because that was a pretty disappointing first date! You didn't do the right things, say the right things, or buy me the right things.


But I guess all those gestures don't matter all that much, in light of deeper abiding things--like true affection, admiration, appreciation, and the sense that I'm more myself when I'm with you than when I'm not.


And I guess that's why the last 7 years of marriage have easily been the best 7 years of my life. Happy Anniversary, my once awkward guy with a loaf of sweet Italian bread.