September is my favorite month. I love the quality of light, the blue skies, the warm days and cool nights, the sense of promise and new beginnings. It’s a month full of good memories, and it’s the month I began dating E.

I met him on Labor Day weekend at the start of my senior year of high school. I had spent that summer getting over a breakup. Every morning I got up and ran six miles and then I spent the rest of the day writing, reading, and listening to music.

In the evenings, Low Maintenance Grrrl and I chased a posse of guys who were attending summer school at the local military college. They were bored and so were we. We snuck INTO the barracks and OUT of the barracks. We tried to learn to do the Carolina Shag with some preppy Southern boys. We sat in the local hangouts eating pretzels and drinking cokes and waiting to be noticed.

One night we had a carload of guys throw two cans of beer through the open window of our car while we were sitting at a stop light in town, and then got a little freaked out when they followed us for SEVENTEEN miles down a winding country road at night—with their headlights turned off. They pulled right into my driveway but chickened out on getting out of the car. Thank God—if my mother had looked out the window and seen them that would have been the last time I got to go cruising with LMG.

I went on a few dates that summer, including one with a guy who told me, “You remind me of Emily Dickinson.” He meant this in a BAD way, as in “you’re antisocial and spend too much time writing.” Clearly not my type. Other dates felt just as awkward. I didn’t think I was “good” at dating and it was depressing.

By the end of the summer, I’d finally accepted that my old boyfriend wasn’t coming back and that partying with the local college guys wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sure, I could put on my “party personality” and keep everyone laughing, but I felt disconnected from the whole experience. I left too much of myself behind when I went out.

On the very last day of that bittersweet summer, I met E. (Details of that night here. ) After a summer of playing the flirt and keeping things light, I was unprepared for his openness, warmth, and candor. He wore his heart on his sleeve. On our second date he said, “I don’t know what I’ve been looking for all my life, but I know you’re the closest I’ve ever come to finding it.”

I liked him a lot but didn’t take the comment seriously. I didn't believe in love at first sight. I thought he was handing me some schmaltzy line in an attempt to accelerate the whole “getting to the next stage” process.

He wasn’t.

He meant what he said.

I loved being with him but It took me quite a while to have confidence that all the wonderful words and gestures he was lobbing my way were sincere. It took me even longer to let my guard down and trust that maybe this relationship could last, even though I was in high school and he was getting ready to graduate from college. Part of me kept waiting for him to launch his retreat, to deliver a speech on how he was ready to begin his career and I was too young.

The speech never came. Instead he kept calling and writing and giving me little gifts and taking me places and charming my mother and loving my family and hanging out with my friends. He was thoughtful and considerate not just in his dealings with me, but with the world at large. I admired his character, and I thought he was totally hot (oops, did I just ruin the tone here? )

After I graduated from high school and he graduated from college, he bought me a diamond solitaire, a gift that thrilled and terrified me in equal measure. I was only 18, heading to college on a scholarship, and not quite ready to commit to wearing a diamond ring or announcing an engagement, even if I had trouble imagining a future that didn’t have E in it.

E understood my ambivalence but insisted he just wanted me and everyone else to know that HE was willing to marry me anytime, and the ring was a symbol of that. So he gave me the solitaire and accepted that we were only “half-engaged.” In what would be a recurring theme in our relationship, he gave me space, lots of space. He trusted that I’d come to a place where the ring would sit easily on my hand and in my heart, and he was right. Before long, I quit carrying the ring in the watch pocket of my jeans and started wearing it and introducing E as my fiancé.

After buying me the ring, E went into the Army and moved a thousand miles away, but continued to write, call, and do what he could to be with me, even driving 19 hours after work on a Thursday just so he could see me at college for a weekend

I married him 18 months after he moved away, making the slightly controversial decision to take a break from school to be with him while he finished his military commitment. With a perfect GPA and a substantial scholarship, no one expected me to leave college, but my decision to get married then rather than wait until later was influenced by life-changing events in my family.

My sister had died of cancer that year and her illness and death, followed weeks later by the unexpected death of a cousin the same age, shook my belief that time was on my side. What if I were to die young like they did? What if I only had 10 years, 5 years, one year, or less left? I decided I’d rather delay my education than my life with E. 

We’ve been married 25 years now, and most of the time, it’s all good. Some of the time it’s REALLY good, but long term relationships aren’t always pretty. Sometimes he thinks I’m a snarky crabass, and I think he’s an uptight weinerhead—and we would both be right in our assessments. : )

We have the dissonance that comes when an engineer marries a creative type, when one person is more likely to accept the status quo and the other questions everything, when one has a high need for cleanliness and order and the other is rapidly losing interest in all things domestic, when one is very high energy and the other is laid back.

On good days, we complement each other; on bad days, all we can see is how we get in each other’s way. Time usually restores the balance in our relationship—we regain our perspective and focus on all that we have in common and this helps us accept our differences.

While we don’t laugh at the same jokes, read the same books, vote for the same political candidates, listen to the same music, or agree on the details of the stories we share, we agree on the big things: how to raise our kids, manage our money, handle our family life, and exercise our religious beliefs.

A few years ago I set aside my diamond wedding set and began wearing a sterling silver claddagh ring instead. The hands stand for friendship, the heart for love, and the crown for loyalty. A diamond may be forever and be shinier and more romantic, but my claddagh ring is a reminder in good times and bad of what brought us together and keeps us together, September to September.