21

26 June 2009

Nicola and I met 21 years ago today: and life changed utterly between one breath and the next. Everything I have done since then, and all I have become, is in some way connected to that meeting.

I just can’t imagine who I am in the alternate universes in which we never met. I hope those Kelleys are happy and full of joy. They can send me postcards: I’ll be here, having a beer on a Friday afternoon with my sweetie, celebrating the years.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life 

Comments

14 Responses to “21”

  1. Jill on June 26th, 2009 10:22 am

    Congrats! I wish you both many more years of happiness. Also, I feel I’ve heard Nicola’s version, but I’ve never heard yours. Do you have one you’ve shared before?

  2. karina on June 26th, 2009 10:31 am

    Congratulations! A happy anniversary indeed. May there be many more over the next many decades. Hugs and cheers. :-)

  3. Mark Tiedemann on June 26th, 2009 10:43 am

    I remember that. Speculations aside, though, I think you’d be just as cool, certainly as gifted, and very much you. Things are just, you know, better this way. :)

  4. nicola on June 26th, 2009 12:45 pm

    Jill, K talks about it a little in our essay, “As We Mean to Go On.”

  5. Jill on June 26th, 2009 12:53 pm

    Thanks Nicola. I have read that one before. I remember really liking how you spoke about your relationship in general. I didn’t remember anything specific about Kelley talking about your first meeting :D .

  6. Kelley on June 26th, 2009 12:58 pm

    “The English say, Start as you mean to go on, so perhaps it’s luck we met at a writing workshop. People warned me these workshops were rough: if I showed weakness of words, of confidence, of self, the other students would bring out the long knives and leave me collecting the leftovers of myself and my precious work in a bucket. But for me, the chance to spend six weeks in the company of students and professionals was like the scene in C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew, where the boy Digory stands in front of the bell and the plaque that says “Make your choice, Adventurous Stranger/Strike the bell and bide the danger/Or wonder, till it drives you mad/What would have followed if you had.” I’ve typed all that from memory because it burned into my adolescent brain the first time I read it, so many years ago, when I understood that I would be faced with such choices in my life: that I would have to draw back, or reach out and grab. That’s what the workshop felt like. So I quit my job and got a loan, and drove from Georgia to Michigan with a left ankle sprained blood-black, bandaged rigid so I could work the clutch pedal with my heel. I was scared witless: of debt, of writing, of not writing. Of those knives. Of finding myself too fucked up to create work that connects rather than distances, and having to go back home with a withered dream, a longed-for identity popped like a balloon.
     
    And then came Nicola. The first time I saw her, in the hallway of the unairconditioned dorm, close and hot as a greenhouse, I opened my mouth to say How was your trip? as if we were already each other’s friend, lover, partner, joint explorer. I knew in our first three sentences that she would be the best writer there; that I would help her be better; that all my assumptions about how my life would unfurl were wrong; and that I would someday be the writer I yearned to be, because she wouldn’t have it any other way.
     
    Sometimes people think it couldn’t have been that sudden, that this is just a story we tell. And it is — the first story of us — but it also happened, and is happening still.”
     
    From “As We Mean To Go On”

  7. Jill on June 26th, 2009 1:12 pm

    Oh yes. Thanks Kelley!

  8. Allan Rousselle on June 26th, 2009 2:25 pm

    Kelley and Nicola: sincerest congratulations on your twenty-one years of happiness. May you continue to enjoy your lives together for many, many years to come!

  9. rhbee on June 26th, 2009 5:41 pm

    Just think now you are old enought to . . . No, wait 21 that’s young. Hell, you are just starting out. Well, happy future days, you all.

  10. Kelley on June 26th, 2009 7:40 pm

    Thank you all very much for your good wishes! It’s been a lovely day.

  11. Jim Cox on June 27th, 2009 6:42 am

    Congrats to both of you :)

  12. Jennifer on June 27th, 2009 10:23 pm

    I will never tire of hearing that story of when you two met. It’s a great story. I believe it, but I wonder why we don’t here more stories like this – it seems pretty rare.

    Happy Anniversary.

  13. Sue Maden on June 28th, 2009 7:25 am

    Congrats Kelley & Nicola! 21 years is an amazing gift. My husband and I will celebrate 11 this year and we feel like we’re just starting out. I think it’s because we feel in some ways we started anew around year 9. We didn’t follow the British, “start as you mean to go on”, although ironically my husband moved here from England to marry me. We had big ups and downs, and still have a few bumps. But it’s a different union now and I’m so thankful. I wish you both another 21 (and another 21 after that! :-) ) years of bliss!

  14. barbara sanchez on September 26th, 2009 7:29 am

    Belated happy anniversary. The world is richer because you met.

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