In Sickness and In Health
Description
Ten years ago, I stood under the chuppah—beneath two massive banyan trees—and exchanged wedding vows with a man who had orchestrated our first meeting with the precision of a romantic comedy plot.
We met in 2008 at the Health Sciences Library on the Stony Brook University campus. I lived in the Chapin Apartments—named after “Cat’s in the Cradle” singer Harry Chapin—reserved for graduate students like me, as I pursued my MPH. And there was Ethan CHAPIN, a first-year med student. Was that bashert or what?
He had a genuine smile and kind eyes. Candidly, he was nothing like the guys I usually dated. There was a sincerity and wholesomeness that was foreign to me (sorry, Dad). When his cell phone rang in his pocket—playing The Office theme song—I thought it was fate. My favorite show! Had I found the Jim to my Pam? (Spoiler alert: I had.)
I discovered after we married that this was entirely premeditated. He’d asked a mutual friend about me, found my Facebook page (which in 2008 included a list of favorite shows), set his ringtone to The Office theme, had a friend call him at the perfect moment, and cast his spell.
There was a brief moment after we initially started dating where we were apart but, as they say on Seinfeld, yada yada yada—here we are, all these years later. We never looked back.
We couldn’t have had more different upbringings. Ethan was raised in a beautiful small town in Southern California to an all-American family—father was a park ranger, mother was a teacher. One of five siblings, all raised to love nature and read lots of books. They baked bread. Had home-cooked meals 7 days a week. I was raised in South Brooklyn as the only child of the Jewish Tony Soprano and a forever-young party girl mother. My childhood was loud dinners at restaurants multiple times a week and weekend excursions to Atlantic City. Yet somehow, these two wildly different worlds collided in a university library and created something beautiful.
United States
