A Little Love from Deirdre and the Artist

I've been thinking a little bit about how some readers requested, when we posted about our engagement and wedding, to hear a little more about our romance. So, here goes!

(I'm going to try to keep it fairly succinct. I hand-wrote 54 pages in my journal recounting our wedding day. Just the wedding day mind you. I don't generally lack for words.)

You know the short story already: I met the Artist through my brother Joseph. They had met by being classmates at Notre Dame.

Attending a 'preppy party' thrown by some friends June 2011. We were dubbed 'preppiest couple.'

I was a junior in college. I had had a rather drama-filled fall that year, as far as guys go, but knew that none of it was going anywhere. Then in the spring, I found myself extremely happy being single -- but not in the sense that women's magazines tout of falling in love with yourself as a first step to finding love. It was simply that Our Lord was really courting me and filling me with joy. So I just wasn't thinking about guys... In fact, I was thinking about the convent. I had done so before in a grudging, reluctant sort of way, but this time I was very excited about it; I went everywhere with an extra bounce in my step and a stirring in my soul. For lack of a better term, it was very romantic!

On Good Friday, I finally took the first step of submitting an online inquiry form to the order of sisters that I was feeling called to join. Practically speaking, it was a very small measure. But for me at that time, mentally and spiritually, it was huge. I had been avoiding it a little bit because of lingering fears, but when it was done I was beyond happy. I felt an intense peace. With a full heart, I just let go of things and put them in God's hands. I had a distinct feeling that it didn't even matter whether or not I entered the convent; it simply mattered that I fulfill whatever God's plan was for my life.

"There you go!" I prayed, "I'm just putting it in your hands! Whatever you want me to do sounds good to me!"

And I really meant it! (It was definitely a moment of grace. My prayers are usually considerably more petty.)

Since then I've come to believe what they say about how you'll meet the right person when you stop worrying. Because it was exactly one week later, on Easter Friday, 2010, that I met The Artist. Jojo had a group of people over to his house to watch The Fantastic Mr. Fox, and since I'd just had a break from school, I had the time to get off campus.

My first-ever impression of the Artist was when I glanced through the guests on the facebook event that Jojo had set up, just to see who would be there. I saw his picture on the list and had two thoughts. One was, "I like his name." The second was, "he looks like just the kind of guy I would go for."

The fated facebook profile picture. I just liked him right away!

A group of us were already standing around in Jojo's kitchen when he came in. I recall that he entered bearing a box of Girl Scouts thin mint cookies, which he began passing around. Everyone else there mostly knew each other. I was waiting for Jojo to introduce me to this guy who was, indeed, just as likeable to behold as he'd seemed in his profile picture.

Ugh! Brothers do not pick up on telepathic signals! Although Jojo does get credit for making the introduction between us, and he later explained that he had foreseen that we would hit it off, the record must show that Jojo did not introduce us. I was pretty much dying for him to, so I was painfully aware of the fact that he didn't.

Then the Artist went ahead and reached across the circle to offer me a cookie, and took the opportunity to introduce himself (even better!). Jojo was surprised; he claimed we had already met, which I contradicted with confidence. The Artist also obligingly disagreed (with a very charming I would have remembered meeting you vibe). He then asked whether I were Jojo's older or younger sister.

Oh, I'm his younger sister... as in, probably the perfect age for you...

By the end of the evening, I had figured out that I had an enormous crush on the Artist, who was fun, kind, and extremely attentive to everyone. I had also determined, quite simply, that I would marry him eventually. The next day in a meeting, I confidently told my boss that I had met my ideal man.

Although we kept in touch and saw each other to some extent after the initial meeting, things did not take off right away. The timing had been very, very right for me in terms of gaining a lot of clarity in a short space of time (bye bye, convent dreams!). But the timing wasn't right for us as a couple. I did my best -- way beyond my usual standards and, in some cases, downright shamelessly -- to create opportunities to see him, and even was so bold as to ask him to help me move out of my dorm at the end of the spring! Despite my efforts, and despite the fact that we enjoyed every minute that we were together and getting to know each other, however, we couldn't get any traction. To my chagrin, we said a definitively friendly farewell for summer.

March 2011. The Artist first visited the LMLD homestead and got to meet some of the family. I was also meeting Pippo for the first time!

{He later explained that he was doing his best to be prudent, because he knew we were about to part ways (you'll recall that I went to France for a while that summer). He was convinced that I was going to be swept off of my feet by some Jean-Pierre and he'd never see me again, so he was being as level-headed as he could. Little did he know that I thought of him every single day that I was away, and was already planning the French honeymoon we would later take. (No exaggeration.) He didn't realize it, but he was the person with whom I corresponded the most while I was abroad -- no one else was willing to jump through the translated email linguistic hoops my immersion experience required.}

So, the months passed and we didn't get any closer. He dated elsewhere (sigh) and I got hard to work on my busy senior year, didn't spare a glance for any other guy, and kept my St. Joseph novenas going. But when he came around again later that Fall (to skip over some of the heartbreaking part), I had a new strategy.

Close to Thanksgiving, he started to suggest some further casual dates. When he called me one night to make some plans, I stopped him in his tracks with a sort of, "we're not spending more time together unless you have your act together" kind of message. He was rather taken aback, seeing that I was serious and that, apparently, he had hurt me by not being more direct before. It became clear that he didn't want to lose me, as he quickly went into concentrated pursuit mode. On a snowy evening shortly thereafter, he came to campus and sat down in my dorm room and tried to explain himself to me while I regarded him coolly (but of course I had made sure that I looked my best before he came over). When he was finished with his nervous protestations, I told him that I was very busy through the rest of the semester, and furthermore that I wouldn't date him unless he really knew what he wanted -- because I already knew what I wanted. So, he was welcome to call me in the new year if that's what he really wanted to do.

He called me Jan. 1, 2011 and asked me on what I now call our first real date.

When we did go out, it was the best time ever. We started at a museum downtown, and then got hot cocoa, and then went to dinner, and then he put his arm around me as we sat under a statue in a chilly park that evening. He could have proposed to me then, and I would have said yes. Instead he simply told me how he couldn't wait for me to meet his family, especially his sisters. We realized that we were meant to be together, so we would be. It was perfect -- and hard to finally call it a night.

In the coming weeks and months, we soaked up every minute together that we could. I found in the Artist the man with whom I was most myself - as a woman, as an artist, as a Christian... Within just a few months we were talking about marriage (the first time we discussed a timeline seriously was St. Patrick's Day, 2011 [he suggested a summer 2011 wedding. I said, 'I need to graduate! I can't plan a wedding!']). In my previous experience, it would have been reckless and dangerous to give my heart away so quickly. But love casts out fear, and I knew that with him I was safe and all was right. I just knew it was him.

So that was that! I had met him about nine months previous, and then we started dating and that lasted about nine months, and then we were engaged for nine months. And here we are! More in love than ever.

You know how it goes... first comes love...

Spring 2011 trip to the DC zoo.

Then comes marriage...

Just as I had foreseen it the day I met him two years previous! ;) 

...and then comes something else that takes nine months!

At a friend's house after a baby shower for another friend who is expecting her little boy in about a month!

Yep. You guessed it.

That's a little bump we've got going on there.

Most days you can't tell. I figured I'd get a shot in this particular blouse, because this is definitely the most pregnant I've ever looked!

I am 16 weeks along, feeling good, and delighted to report that another Daughter has become a mommy! We are not going to find out the sex in advance, so while the baby is in utero we're referring to him/her as "Finnabee" (a name created randomly on a whim from the Artist's imagination -- no significance at all). The due date is July 21, 2013.

It just seemed to make sense to talk about our love story while we wait for this Little Love. Our baby has already drawn us so much closer together in amazing ways, and it thrills me to think that I get to carry a bit of my husband around with me all the time!