2006 is an exciting year for Lisa and I, who will be married on June 18, finally “taking the next step” in our decade-long relationship. Fools rush in, no?

Lisa and I met as freshmen at Connecticut College in the fall of 1996. She was the loopy, combat-boot wearing girl from Room #006. I lived across the hall in #007 and scratched my stomach when I was nervous, which was, and is, often.

I’m still not quite sure if Lisa was enacting some sort of ancient Connecticut Yankee courtship ritual, but Lisa invited me over and showed me her entire wardrobe (almost). Heavy on knitwear for one so young, as I recall. For our first date, I wore the orange bow tie my Nana had made for my senior prom. We ate Chinese takeout on the soccer field while listening to Dave Matthews Band on a boom box. Yikes. We’ve come a long way…I think.

I choose to remember kissing Lisa for the first time on a Saturday afternoon in October, unless that old standby—the drunken kiss to the forehead—counts, in which case it was maybe a week earlier. I remember staying up a number of times talking to Lisa until past five in the morning. My roommate, poor soul, probably does too. Lisa always could talk. I’m more the strong, silent, ruggedly handsome type.

A lot of water under that bridge. Later, Lisa studied abroad in Paris and I went to southern India. I remember calling her from the STD/ISD booth down the street with maybe ten Mysore University students (and one or two menacing truck drivers) queued up behind me.

We’ve backpacked together through Ireland, France, and Italy, and though Lisa has never much loved camping or youth hostels, we’re still together. We even made it through the ten months I spent in Maine impersonating the world’s worst telemarketer, and I give her a lot of credit, because I was one unhappy guy. I drove to see Lisa in Boston when I could, and she took four hour bus trips to Camden when she could, until finally she learned the route well enough to help out the drivers when they got lost.

I spent two years in New York City while Lisa got her MSW in Boston. Then Lisa moved into my studio apartment before moving in with Liz in Astoria. I moved to a place a few blocks away, and we navigated the world of 24 hour diners, Laundromats, and sidewalk souvlaki vendors together. And then Lisa moved in. And my princely one bedroom, which had been so tidy and spacious, now became our home.

Somehow we made it through a year together there. Lisa thrived at Mt. Sinai Hospital, while I continued slinging mortgages under the tutelage of my uncle, Jan. I hope the friends we made there remain our friends for the rest of our lives.

And then finally in August of 2005, we moved to Boston. Our apartment is miraculously equidistant between a Store 24 and the Central Square Branch of the Cambridge Public Library, which makes me happy. I carry a backpack (and occasionally a lunchbox) to law school, which makes me feel young and spry, and Lisa’s picture hangs in my locker. Meanwhile, Lisa has brought her confrontational, New York counseling style to MGH, where she is loved and feared, but mostly loved if her reports are true.

I asked Lisa to marry me on August 8 in Walpole, NH, one of our favorite places in the world. I wore a long-sleeved shirt and pants on an ninety degree day, and nearly fainted while walking up a slight incline overlooking a valley pasture, telling Lisa I wanted her to visit a heifer (named Grape Nuts, by the by) I’d taken a shine to. Apparently I took her—meaning Lisa; the cow was expressionless—completely by surprise, because she had to sit down when I asked her. Actually, we both did.