I want to tell you about how your dad and I met and how you came to be. It is not a story spun from fairy tales but I think it does have kismet qualities. It is a love story that is rooted with family at its center- as all great love stories should be.
We met on Sunday, December 9, 2007. The day before daddy's birthday.
A little background: mommy and daddy's families go back to the years when both families lived in Detroit. In fact, your Grandma and aunt Lieu worked with your Great-aunt Thu for many years before they moved to Houston. Long story made even longer, though mommy always knew of daddy by name- I never had a face to put with the name. Over the years we somehow always managed to miss each other at get-togethers. Either he was away at college or I was away. I only knew him as your aunt Lieu's older brother. Looking back, God must have had a plan for us all along so that we would meet each other when we were both ready and not a second before.
Flash forward to that fateful day in December 2007, daddy met us at the Exxon Mobil on the corner of West Sam Houston Parkway and Bellaire Blvd. You will recognize this intersection as undoubtedly mommy has pointed it out to you every time we drive pass it. Why did daddy meet us at a gas station of all places? Well after spending over an hour of getting lost trying to find your Great-aunt's house in Pearland, we found out (later) that daddy actually left his own birthday party to meet us at Exxon so that we could follow him back to Pearland. You will have learned by now that mommy has absolutely zero sense of direction and tends to use landmarks as her guide. I sincerely hope that you do not inherit this trait from me.
I will tell you that it was not love at first sight, despite anything your daddy may try to tell you (like I swooned at his feet. Don't believe any of it). The love that daddy and mommy share is something that grew slowly and perhaps even from a place we didn't even know existed. When we first met, we barely spoke more than two sentences to each other, if that. By the end of the night I still viewed him as Lieu's older brother and he probably just saw me as your Great-aunt Thu's niece. Nothing more. Yet.
Skip ahead to four months after that initial meeting. Mommy decided to make the life-changing move to Houston permanently. No, despite anything anybody tells you, I did not make the move because daddy lived in Houston. In fact, I hadn't even given him much thought since we met months ago. The move was a completely career-oriented one as jobs in Detroit were scarce at the time. Moving to a new city without knowing anybody, your Great-aunt Thu decided I should give daddy a call and ask him to show me around.
Four years later, married and with our first child on the way... he's still showing me around the city. I'd be lost without him- figuratively and literally lost.
The below picture is one of the very many reasons why I love him. Because he makes faces like these and never ceases to make me laugh. At him and with him.
And this is how I met your father.
