how i met your mother

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIkWJZf33UY


Recently I was explaining this blog to a friend, the purpose about it and how it all came to be. their response was "how great for emery that he will be able to go back and look at his own history." of course i agreed and lamented about how facebook took over. then it really occurred to me that emery would miss out on some really good posts about the evolution of his parents. going from happy couple, to split couple, angry at each other for the change of circumstance to where we are now-to who we are now. the truth of all relationships is that they take work.

so for this post i wanted emery to read about us.

i met emery's mom the first time when we were just kids in high school. we met at a venue in boise called the crazy horse. i cant remember the band, i promise you they were good and probably on tour. music has always been the one thread that no matter how much we may disagree with each other we could always agree on the same band. so that night at the crazy horse i walked up to carrie because we both happened to be wearing mickey mouse watches. the conversation starter. it was typical awkward high school conversation of boy meets girl at a music venue and there was some acid involved.

we would cross paths again 10 years later in san francisco because of the friendships we made during those crazy horse days. rob, emery's name sake, was living in bernal heights. i was in town to audition for a commercial, having recently graduated from uc davis with an mfa in acting. carrie was in town from seattle with her best friend to visit rob. i met the three of them at rob's apartment for a quick visit after my audition. when i walked in and saw carrie again for the first time i had that reaction of being totally struck awkwardly dumb-something she still talks about today. it was a moment of instant attraction along with that intuitive feeling of knowing i was going to have a future with this person. (we can all agree that hindsight gives us the opportunity to say something like 'i knew i was going to have a future with this person' but the truth is the truth and i know mine.) anyhow, after being awkward for all too long that quickly developed into an anxiety of needing to return to truckee, where i was living for the moment, i agreed to give them a ride to downtown. when we got into the car i happened to have the pixies on which carrie immediately commented on. right back to the music. even though they invited me to come, and after hearing about their night i really wished i had, i drove the 3 hours back to truckee.

a year and half later i was living in seattle. i was home for the first time. it was my birthday weekend and rob came to visit(rob lived in seattle for years before moving to sf). he called carrie to meet up with us at the comet tavern to start the evening out with pin ball, whiskey and cheap beer. we all went out dancing, partying and had an incredible evening of fun. later that night to early that next morning we all fell out of neighbors ready to go home. carrie and i decided to walk from capitol hill to queen anne. she lived on the top and i lived in interbay on the other side. it was an easy hike for us being the walkers we are. her apartment was on the way home. i never made it past her apartment.

over the next couple months we started to see each other when time permitted that would eventually lead up to emery. we were both busy people. carrie was putting herself through school at the uw and working in a lab on pill hill. i was working as a bike messenger during the day and doing theater at night. carrie was determined not to make it easy for me-very determined- she was living on her own, she was her own person, doing everything on her terms. so i met her terms and matched her determination with my own. we would meet every available morning at 6:45 for coffee on the top of queen anne. the only time carrie made available to me at the start. eventually would make plans to catch up later that day for lunch or happy hour or plan a date for the weekend. then the 7:15 bus would stop and carrie would get on for the uw, i would radio into base for pu's from the top of queen anne and then ride down into the city passing her bus on the way. we never texted because it wasnt available, we would only call if we couldnt meet up like we had planned, otherwise we just showed up where we said where we would be.

the details of our relationship in those early days of getting our first apartment together, living together and the life we had those are ours-they are private. what i will tell you is that we had a lot of fun. sometimes we shared in the same fun, sometimes we had fun on our own, but we did it good. now its coming up on 14 years since we met at the comet tavern. we have endured so many changes to our relationship, endured and succeeded any expectations of being single parents without ever losing respect for the other. we are better people because of each other. we have succeeded because we dont care what the picture looks like we just care about owning our own truth. the mutual truth we share is our son, and because we remain kind and good to each other emery is a kind and good kid thats the truth