ten years.

Ten years ago today, Marc and I had our first of many first dates. And while things haven't always gone as smoothly as they did back then, when all that mattered was whose dorm room we'd be sleeping in that night, I'm glad we've ended up where we are. Which is not to say Connecticut, necessarily, where even the rich people are cold, but together, and sane.

Our first date was dinner at a restaurant called Yaffa, a restaurant which Marc later confessed he'd never really liked, and which was really too hipster-East-Village-junkieland for either one of us in 1994. I'd already noticed his tan neck and watched his gold necklace walk across that neck through several hours of classes. He'd already pointed me out to a friend as, "the girl in the Ernie-stripes shirt."

We'd been on lots of group outings, mainly orchestrated by me so that I could just be near him, and on that January 21st we'd just returned from Christmas break, where I'd been unceremoniously dumped by my high school boyfriend and he'd mostly cleared up a few former relationships.

When we came back from dinner, we made out in my dorm room for a while and he asked me to be his girlfriend. I'd assumed at some point during the making out that I already was, so I went ahead and said yes.

It wasn't the most sophisticated start to a relationship, but I was 17 and didn't really know any better.

Since then, when things have been good, they've been great. I have always felt like Marc makes my life good in a way that nobody else comes close to. We are more alike than we'd sometimes care to admit, but different enough that he's still the one person in my life that I've never felt I could completely understand. I can never figure out what to get him for Christmas. I still can't get why he wouldn't like the food at Yaffa. But we've always been able to communicate in a way that seems to confound our friends and families, some combination of dorky humor and creative frustration feeding our terrible jokes and silly fights and keeping us from ever being truly bored. When we spend too much time together, each of our abilities to communicate with other people suffers. It's like we need each other to finish our thoughts.

I love him so much that it makes me cry sometimes, even when I'm not pregnant. Happy sortaversary, shmegeg.