*** Well, this is it my friends. The final installment that I will write about our love story. The truth is, I could write about our story forever. Every time that I think about it and recall all of the details of our brief courtship, I think of something else that I want to share with you here. More memories that I never want to forget. But it is time to move on. While I could seemingly get lost in all of the details of our beginning, the "middle" part of our life continues to go on all around me, and there are other life moments that I want to get back to recording in this space. For example, my sweet, chubby, squishy, cuddly, baby boy turns ONE a week from tomorrow (insert wailing Mama sob here)! I will never understand where the time goes, and I don't want to miss a thing. I hope you enjoy the final chapter of how our love came to be!***
After one wonderful week in Ohio, Boss and I returned home to Texas, bought our first kitten Franki, and picked right back up where we had left off. Life was very, very sweet during those days. I absolutely knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this man. There was not a doubt in my mind, and he had shared that he felt the very same way about me.
In the early days of November, Boss began to act a bit funny and I knew that something was up. For one, he told me that I was NOT allowed to check his email for him, which was a favorite past time of mine. And then there was the time that we were spending the weekend with my parents, and Boss and my dad kept having private conversations. That irritated me to no end. Back then, I felt the need to be involved in every conversation, and if I am being completely honest, not much has changed today :). One afternoon I called Boss' store to see when he was getting off, and they told me that he had already left for the day. So naturally I called his cell phone to see where he was, and he told me that he was still at work. Aha! I had caught him, and I immediately knew that he had a secret girlfriend that he was not telling me about. The only thing that I could not figure out was why he had been talking with my dad about his secret girlfriend. Traitor. It turns out though, that Boss was actually buying my engagement ring the afternoon that I caught him in his lie. And he was talking with my dad about proposing to me. And I could not check his emails, because I would see that he had begun to make payments to the jewelry store. So it all made perfect sense, after all. Thank goodness there was no secret girlfriend. She would have been insanely jealous of my ring.
Last November I recorded on these pages how Boss popped the question , so I won't repeat that story now, but I will say that with his ring on my finger I felt like the luckiest woman in the world. It was a dream come true, to know that someone loved me enough to want to share his entire lifetime with me. It was a dream come true, to know that that man was Boss. I didn't take my eyes off of my ring for weeks. Being newly engaged was everything that I dreamed of and more, but various people's reactions to our engagement was not.
Surprisingly enough, we had our entire families support. In the beginning, my parents were cautious about my interest in an older, newly divorced man, but their cautions quickly faded as they spent more and more time with him. By the time we were engaged (you know, a whole two months after we started dating ) they were completely okay with our decision to marry. Boss' family was supportive, too. They might have thought it all to be a little fast, but they were nothing but supportive of our choice and respectful of our decision. It was several of our friends who had negative things to say. I know their worry stemmed from concern that this was happening too quickly, but many of their words hurt. I was the happiest that I could ever remember feeling in my entire life, and I wanted those that I loved to be happy for me, too. I will admit that some of my joy was stolen away by their words. But they could not steal the love that was growing in my heart for Boss on a daily basis. Once I asked Boss what we could do to show all of the naysayers that this was the real deal. In his wisdom, he told me that the only thing that would show them that we were forever committed to each other was time. And here we are, almost nine years and three children later. I do believe it is finally safe to say, booyah naysayers! Ohh. That felt good :).
We decided to set the wedding date for May 31, 2003. That would give us six months to plan our special day. I even dropped out of college so that I could put all of my time and efforts into planning our wedding. (Gasp! I know, right? To any and all teenagers reading this, dropping out of college to plan your wedding is not wise. And don't worry. I went back to school soon after we were married, before I dropped out again once getting pregnant with Emma. What can I say? For me, dropping out had nothing to do with lacking brains. All I have simply ever wanted to be was a wife and a mother, so a degree and a career were not for me.)
I loved every single moment of planning my wedding to Boss. We chose to be married on the grounds of an old, southern Bed and Breakfast, so the decorations were minimal, but the surroundings simple and beautiful. My cousin's wife made all of the flowers. Cake tasting was awesome, and the one we selected rocked. My aunt, my mother, and I went shopping for my dress. We selected our bridesmaids and groomsmen (people who were important to us during that special season of our lives). We selected music that we loved. My sweet daddy hired a carriage to cart us from the ceremony to our country bar-b-que reception, complete with karaoke and all of our family and friends. If I had to plan it all over again, there is not one thing that I would change. (well, maybe one thing. I think I would have really loved having a first dance. I can just picture Boss and I swaying under the trees to Rascal Flatts The Broken Road. And since we wound up getting pregnant pretty darn fast after we were married anyway, it would not have mattered if I really had gotten pregnant from dancing with a boy, just like my grandpa had told me I would. Ha! Oh, I would have also changed the heat. It was hot as blue blazes that day, with a heat index of 106. Whew!) But seriously, it was the most romantic day of my life. On May 31, 2003 my life was forever changed. I became Mrs. Boss Zickafoose. Two lives were molded into one. Two hearts began sharing one dream.
So that is our story. Or really, it is God's story. I will always be amazed that he brought a small town Ohio boy and a big city Texas girl together in the heart of Aggie country. I will always be amazed at how he worked out all of the details, so that the two of us could transform our two separate lives into one life. I will always be amazed that he created another individual so perfectly for me. And I will always, always be thankful. Those first few months together were complete bliss. But since then,life, with its ups and downs, has also happened. The road we have traveled has not always been easy, but there is no one else on earth that I would rather travel with.
The End.
