Love in the Time of Corona

I have two teenagers… and yet it feels like I was one yesterday. In so many ways, I haven’t changed. I vividly remember being in a motel room with my BFFs during the 8th grade school trip (34 years ago) and spontaneously making up an ode to Milano cookies as I danced on the beds and devoured a bag. I ate Milano cookies today… except this time I hummed the tune to my dog and my bed doesn’t have a quarter slot to make it vibrate (not making that up). In other ways, I’m thankful things are so different. The hormones! The angst! I was a boy-crazy fool. On occasion, my feelings for my crush-du-jour were just too much to keep inside (read with drama). My outlet became a graffiti wall of confessions in the basement of my childhood home in Atlanta. (I’m so sorry, Mom.) This wall-of-fame-of-unrequited-love is filled with the names of boys I desperately “loved” through my teenage years. Most of them I don’t even remember. 

My mother has never painted over that wall. Today, however, it looks a bit different. In the early days of our relationship, my (now) husband took offense that I had not added his name to the list. It started as a joke, but leaned towards serious as the years passed with no fresh additions. I would argue that he was in another league than the names on that wall, but he maintained his position on it. 

For our 5th wedding anniversary, I presented Travis with a homemade book telling our story. We have a neat meet-cute that was fun to write. The first words we ever spoke to each other were “movie theatre” and “bicycle” – two words that still very much represent who we are today. We met on a Wednesday and picked our wedding date the following Sunday. We took our time getting to the altar though, so the 5th anniversary book wove through an almost 10 year tale. The best bit, however, was the last page that told the part of the story Travis didn’t know about yet. It was a picture of the basement wall with a null-set drawn over all the other names and his name painted biggest of all. Imagine my mom and me in the basement with the paint brush, giggling as we revised such silly history. Travis loved it.

Fast forward 18 years. We’re renovating a house in Lake Forest, Illinois that will be our home by the end of summer. A long-distance project of this scope should be incredibly stressful, but some dear friends introduced us to the most amazing builder, Brad Meyer. He has gone above and beyond to keep us connected via FaceTime, texts, phone calls, and photos.

One day, not too far into the demo phase of our project, Brad sent us a picture of the basement of our new house. When the crew tore down the existing paneling, they revealed a hidden love graffiti wall. Brad thought we’d get a kick out of it, but had no idea how meaningful of a find that was for us. I mean, crazy! Right? All these years later, I’m moving into a house that was also inhabited by love-crazy fools. I’ll feel right at home.

When we started this project, I had planned to travel to Lake Forest to work with Brad on a regular basis. Enter Covid-19 and we’re all sheltering-in-place. You know you’ve hired the right builder, when in the middle of a pandemic, you’re comfortable saying “hey, could you do something for me?”. Since I won’t be getting up to our new house before the graffiti-love-wall is once again concealed, Brad kindly made our mark for us. 

Travis loves Amanda. A (who for sometime has been one-boy-crazy) loves T … who puts Milano cookies in her stocking every Christmas.

Note: If you too want a builder who indulges your crazy instead of judging it, check out: https://meyerhomesinc.com/. They can build a home anywhere from anywhere with or without the graffiti.

Special Thanks to Pepperidge Farm for being the only company to never discontinue something I love.