I then fly back to California for Comic-Con for work (different story, sorry) and send geek stuff and Legos and stuff for his kids and I get a Cyanide and Happiness cartoon of the two of us done. We geek out over Star Wars via FaceTime and I send him videos of the “Outlander” street stuff (lots of women with bagpipes) to which he replies “get tae f*#%” because remember, he’s Glaswegian.
And while I was sitting in California, the conversation turns to “what we would have done differently in our marriages” which can be really hard and weird but it wasn’t, and I said “I would have married someone like you” and he said “And I would have married someone like you. I would’ve, actually, married you” and we both paused for a minute and let that sink in.
But we’d still not met in person.
That afternoon, while he slept, I cleaned out my savings and bought a ticket to Glasgow from August 6 through the 10th. Roughly 72 hours. Because I’d hit the wall. I had to actually meet him. There wasn’t any way I could wait until September.
I tell him this that night/morning, and say “I’ll be there in two weeks — you don’t have to meet me at the airport, but I am impatient and that’s it. I have to meet you.” And he says, “Right, here’s the thing. I’ll know if I’m in love with you in about 3 minutes after you arrive.” And I say the same thing. I may be in love with this man, because he’s amazing, but …
WHAT IF HE SMELLS WEIRD
Smell is super important.
So I apologized for altering the timeline we’d agreed on but I couldn’t wait. NOPE NOT A MONTH LONGER.
So we talk a lot about that 72 hours. Should I just meet him at his office? Will he pick me up? I told him, I just want him to kiss me at the airport. Like in the movies.
And that’s what he did on August 7. He ran towards me, and kissed me. He didn’t smell weird. He smelled good. It was the most intensely romantic 72 hours I’ve ever had. He took me up to a B&B in Alyth, and he wooed me. Flat out wooing.
He still came to D.C. over Labor Day.
He proposed (for the last time of many) in 2016 in St Margaret’s Chapel in Edinburgh, with our kids hovering around outside. We were married in St Andrews on April 15, 2017, almost two years to the exact day that the whale said hi to a bunch of scientists. Susan did a reading at our ceremony and Dr Robert Ballard of the Nautilus (the man who found the Titanic!) sent a video message that was played at the reception.
And that’s it.
