
It has been ten years since the day Bob and I got engaged.
Bob proposed on October 10, 2010. It was a Sunday. We had gone to Angel Island to watch the Blue Angels. He didn’t propose there when the Blue Angels were making hearts with their smoke trails. He proposed later that evening in his apartment which was surprising to me. So much happened in the last ten years. From our beautiful wedding to the disapproval of Bob’s parents for our marriage. From preventing pregnancy to requiring a uterine surgery. From high FSH to IVF. From multiple IVF cycles with my own eggs (talking about eight of them) to a few different donors. From frozen DE cycles to fresh DE cycles. From my own uterus to our gestational carrier’s selfless sacrifice. All that long history of ups and downs resulted in the birth of our beautiful twins three years ago. If you asked me ten years ago on the day of our engagement how I would imagine my life would be ten years from then, I would probably say I would have a kid or two that are about 7 and 5 years old and I would be working part-time as a speech language pathologist. My life is nothing like what I thought it would turn out to be. I would laugh at you if you told me that I would have twins that I take care of full time at home. Me? Twins? Stay at home mom? Whether I expected it or not, this is my life, which is at times chaotic, but it is also full and beautiful despite being in the middle of a pandemic. Even when this is nothing like I imagined, it is what God has given me and I wouldn’t want it any other way. It is just funny (to me) that nowadays I know way more about calorie-rich food than I do speech and language therapy techniques. Ultimately, it is about what is the most important at that particular stage of your life.
Normally we don’t celebrate our engagement anniversary. However, ten years seems like a good milestone for an excuse to eat good food and we hadn’t done much in the last six months. Every chance we get we would like to make our ordinary life a little bit special. The previous time we had sashimi was on the day of Bob’s birthday in February sitting at the sushi bar at a crowded Japanese restaurant. Sitting inside a restaurant with many many patrons in a close quarter seems like a lifetime away. We found a new sushi restaurant in our neighborhood with great ratings. We phoned in the order and Bob picked up. I made the kids and my mom pizza for dinner. After we fed the kids and put them down for the night, the two of us got to thoroughly enjoy our anniversary dinner together without one single interruption. The sashimi did not disappoint. The fish was the kind that melted in your mouth. It hit all the spots that it was supposed to hit. Tasty wine and lovely conversation. It was the perfect way to celebrate a little milestone during this pandemic.
