The Day I Fell in Love

For Eloise

The world as I know it did not end on the twenty first of December in Twenty-Twelve. For me, it changed completely five days before, because that is the day I fell in love with you.

 

That day seemed so ordinary. It was a cold rainy one in Boston, almost sleeting, not so uncommon for a winter's day in New England. I got out of bed at what passes for early for a person who works the night shift. I cleaned my apartment and fed my two cats, Ray Charles and Johnny Cash. They did not know the world was about to change either. 

Then I packed my laundry into my bright green bag with the wheels on it and pulled it up the hill in the cold rain to the laundromat. I had bought a packet of Tide Stain Fighter/Color Booster and thought that finally managing to get the grease stain out of my favorite shirt would be the most exciting event of the day. You see, I did not know what was happening seventy-five miles away.

 

I went to the gym, forty five minutes on the treadmill and thirty on the bike and by the time I was done with that I was hungry for my dinner so I went home and made myself some Kraft three cheese macaroni and cheese (the kind with the shell shaped pasta) and watched some Christmas specials from my DVR. Turns out, the two I picked (the First Christmas Snow and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas) were your mom's favorites when she was a little girl. Maybe part of me knew something was changing.

 

Around eight o'clock, I remembered that I has some shopping to do, so I put my favorite Christmas album on my ipod and headed back out into the rain. I went to Marshalls and bought a new pair of jeans, some chocolate covered oreos and a package of Christmas crackers (plaid ones, plaid is quite popular with us, as you will come to know). And right in the middle of Meg Hutchinson's rendition of O Holy Night, my phone buzzed in my pocket, the world changed, and I fell in love; completely, unmistakably irrevocably in love. With you.

Author's Note

This is a short story I wrote about and for my neice who was born yesterday, 16 Dec 12). I wrote this completely for her, so she knows how much she is loved from the moment of her birth.