happiest

A couple people in the blogoversary post asked about my happiness.

This is interesting to me - partly because I sometimes struggle to find a definition of "happiness" that I feel, um, happy about. So, I'm still thinking on that one. But what I can answer (after some contemplation) is my happiest day.

I've had many very happy days, and many days of pure joy mixed in with innumerable combinations of other emotions. But as I tried to think of my happiest day, as much untainted by other feelings as is ever possible, it is this:

It was August 1997. I was 22 and had just gotten home from my 18 mo. mission to Germany. It had been 3 yrs since I had last seen or spoken with Zac and I had a treasured stack of weekly letters to prove that our relationship had continued to grow and flourish even in the absence of any other contact. I had already driven the 3 hrs up to NJ from VA to see him and we had survived that first nerve-wracking reunion. We had held hands again by the end of that very first day. And even shared a second-time "first kiss" (hehehe).

And then (although I might be mixing up some of the chronology), at some point, he came down with me to stay at my house for a few days before leaving to go back out to BYU. We knew by this point that our feelings for each other had not changed over our 3 yr separation. And our conversations were very quickly shifting into discussions of "what if we . . ." and "do you really think we could . . .?"

And although I don't think we had spoken the "M-Word" aloud at that point, we both knew that's what we were talking about, in tentative, speculative roundabout ways.

On one of those warm summer nights, we were outside lying on the trampoline and talking about the future and looking up at the stars. What I remember is the moment when Zac specifically said something about how if we could make our finances and things work separately, then surely we could also make them work together (yes, he was and is an accountant, deep down - hehe). And somehow the realization suddenly hit me that we were talking about building our futures, together. For real. And that it could really happen. With me. And this amazing boy. It wasn't just some future dream anymore. It was happening.

And that was when I think I was filled with more happiness than I ever thought possible. I think I jumped up and started jumping (literally, we were on a trampoline), unable to keep my emotions in check. I think I also may have cried a little. Because, even though I waited for him to buy me a ring and all of that to make our engagement official (~2 mos later), it was in that moment that I knew it. We were going to get married!

And most of my other happiest days were the natural extensions of that one moment. Getting engaged, getting married, finding out we were expecting, the birth days of each of my kids . . . . All of those days stemmed from this day, the day that we knew that whatever else might lie in store, our futures were bound up and woven together from then on. The happiest day I think I've ever known. :)