First Name Only

Our love story
began with friendship.
Mark and I met
at school.
He dated
my best friend for about a month or two.
He always insisted it was just a few weeks.
But it was high school,
it was summer,
and time was moving slower.
After that ended
Mark and I continued being friends.
We had Disneyland passes
and we would go at least a couple times
a week with a group of our friends.
At summer camp we were together a lot.
And I went camping with his family
that summer.
We sat on a log under the stars
and just opened up
about our lives. Our hopes.
Just a week or so later
he so eloquently told me
“I think I like you.”
That’s always been so funny to me
that he told me in such an uncertain way.
Because our relationship seemed
pretty certain early on.
September 21 was our first date.
We went skating, and then
got icees and drove up to the top of a hill
near where his grandma lived at the time.
There I was sitting beside him,
looking at the city lights,
and we were talking about God.
We did that a lot.
Less than a month later
I turned 16.
Mark took me to Big Bear for my
birthday.
I remember being so nervous thinking he was going to
try to kiss me.
I kept looking away.
Trying to avoid it.
But he finally caught up with me
in a little shop in Big Bear.
It’s hard to describe
the connection with Mark.
But I always knew I would
marry him if he would ask me.
And he was pretty certain too.
For my birthday his gift to me
was a new Bible
with only my first name
imprinted on it
just in case
my last name would be changing.