The story of our first date.

"...vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love." - Brene Brown


Today my husband told me the story of our first date.

I believe it is customary, in most normal marital relationships, for each partner to have some recollection of the events of their first date. For this reason it has always left me with a profound sense of shame when it occurred to me that I could not, for all my best efforts, recall the day I met my husband in person for the first time.

There are many other things I don't remember. For the first three years I did not know my own wedding date, and I still have to call my husband at least half the time someone wants to know his birth date.

I had always been ashamed to be so very absent-minded. Having been a child diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, I had been drilled on the shame of being late for appointments, forgetting birthdays and names, forgetting to keep a promise etc. etc. etc. By the time I was 10, I was quite terrified of forgetting. I felt like Dora the fish, or that girl in 50 First Dates - my mind was broken.

I hated forgetting or becoming distracted, and I was almost obsessively careful never to admit to it unless I felt it would be socially acceptable. Having felt the shame of forgetting so important a date as our first date, it never occurred to me that my husband would have been happy to remind me.

As is his way, he told me only the facts. He recalled how he arrived in a bakkie with his friend. He recalled that I was sitting on the metal garden chairs in my parent's garden. I wore a black top, and my pants were easy to unzipper.

At this point I smiled and felt a certain thrill, the kind often described in trashy romance novels as a frisson. Here I was, a grown up woman, hearing the story of her own seduction as a innocent young thing. Wonderment!

He took me with him in his mind: We drove to the nearby mall, and we watched the movie Swordfish. Neither of us remember the film well – we were otherwise occupied (Here he smiled like a sunny day). We petted in the back of the bakkie while his friend had a beer in the nearby bar.

And then I remembered. I remembered it for myself.

It flooded back. Being nervous and exited and terribly flattered that a young man who goes to University and is three years older than me and who had to travel two hours from Pretoria to Johannesburg to see me would want to come and meet me.

I remembered how we played and fondeled like good little closeted Afrikaans kids do when their parents aren't watching. I remembered my old boyfriend calling me on my cellphone, and me admitting that I was “with the new man in my life” just to cut him off, and then feeling afraid that I had admitted too much of how I felt about my new beau within his earshot.

I remembered more. I rememebered being just a kid, head over heels in love. I remembered the midnight texting and sexting. The cybering. The emails. The long philosophical discussions(which were to become a mainstay of our relationship). I remembered my V-shaped tops that had only spagetthi straps in the back and my hipsters that showed off my bellybutton.

I remembered reading Isaac Asimov for the first time. Larry Niven. Robert Heinlein.

In that moment of remembering it struck me that I was feeling a sense of joy so great that I wanted to soar up into the sky and do loop-de-loops. Here were the tender, beautiful days of my courtship brought vividly to life in my mind again.

It struck me then how much of a fool I had been. This happiness had always been there for the taking. I could have felt this moment again each time I asked him to tell me the story.

Today we have been a couple for 3467 days, and for the first time I wasn't afraid to admit that I didn't remember our first date.

Suddenly I realised there were many other things I have been ashamed to admit I had forgotten. Many things that my husband, who has the mind of a cyborg datarecorder, could be called upon to recall with me, and in so doing, enjoy once more.

The thrill of exitement this gave me was immense and made me feel so great a measure of joy that I felt I should sit down and write it all down this very instant.

:D