Member-only story
Pitfall Romance
How I Found the Love of My Life
Happy Anniversary Memo
I met my husband in college in 2003. Both of us were “adult learners,” a nice way of saying we had already passed the time in our lives when we could join student societies; not that either of us ever would have.
He had already graduated with his degree in Mechanical Engineering but stayed on to work on a big project with the physics department. That’s how we met. It was my last year, and I needed a job to make ends meet. I was newly divorced with two children and close to graduation.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw him. I thought he looked like the archetypical Boeing engineer — attractive, fit (he surfed!) smart, and unavailable.
But as time went on, I noticed how he interacted with students, how he treated people. How he treated my daughter (she was 16 and worked part time on the same project). I liked what I saw.
I asked around to see if anyone knew if he was attached — he was always working so the prevailing theory was that he wasn’t. I was intrigued by the fact that no one could tell me, even the people who shared his office with him. He was all business.
Finally, a few days after I’d finished my last day, handed in my last paper, and signed up for my cap and…
