Memoirs

My pal Jaime, who's getting married to her best friend this weekend (hooray!!!), posted that she's reading Memoirs of a Geisha. And that reminded me of this great, great memory that I for some reason feel compelled to share with my readership.

I first read this book in 1999, long before the movie came out. It was the week after I graduated from Hardin-Simmons, and I was spending it in Kansas City with my grandparents. It was a lovely, restful, fun week, and I got to sleep in the "adult" attic bedroom for the first time--the bedroom my parents always got, with the quaint slanted ceiling and the window overlooking an extravagantly blooming dogwood tree. I felt grown-up and independent, with this quiet sort of contemplative feeling about it all. I spent hours on that bed, reading Geisha (a fantastic book), and periodically writing in a notebook. And at some point, I started writing about this great friend Alex back at HSU, that guy who also loved the Muppets and Star Wars and asparagus and had this great grin and the warmest hug on earth. I wrote about how it was really too bad that I was leaving Abilene, because we had this amazing connection and shared these bizarre tastes... and how if I wasn't moving to Denton in the fall, I'd probably have made a move.

I didn't remember this until a year or so after we'd been married, when I chanced upon Geisha in my bookcase, and the memory of it completely amazed me. It amazed me just as I am continually amazed at God's wisdom and grace in bringing Alex and I together. We are two such perfectly suited individuals, with such strange similarities and complementing dispositions... it's an amazing gift that we've been given, and we strive to honor it by keeping our relationship one of kind words, thoughtfulness, and deepening friendship.

I always think of sitting on that bed, thinking of Alex, when I read this book. And that always makes me smile.