The Matchmaker

I don’t like cliché things. It’s not something I decided on one day, it’s just always sort of been like that. I don’t know why, but anything that rings of a trope or stereotype drives me batty. So, when I say that the way I met my wife was probably something to do with God’s sense of humor, you can believe me.

I met my wife sitting in a coffee shop, after being stood up by a potential date.

Didn’t see that coming, did you? It’s like the start of a bad romance movie.

Where’s the dog, you ask? Well, I’m getting there. He is a very crucial part of this. Actually, he is absolutely pivotal, as you will see in just a bit, but I can’t get that point across very well without giving you just a tiny bit of a backstory. I only get the one memory of him to use, remember?

Okay, so there I was, sitting in a coffee shop, writing, and in marches my wife. (She wasn’t my wife yet, of course, but you’ll see.) She sits down at the counter next to me and looks over my shoulder at my laptop. “Do you mind if I ask what you’re writing?” she asks me, completely unconcerned with whether or not I was concentrating.

So, I was still a little sore about having been stood up. I can tell you that I was definitely not writing at this point, and was more or less glaring at her. She told me later that I looked ‘severe’ or ‘angry’.

Anyway, I wasn’t completely evil, so I did what I now know to be a terrible job of explaining my first attempt at a series. She liked it, we left, went our separate ways, and I thought that that was it. I went back to the coffee shop the next day, and one of the baristas handed me a small piece of paper, explaining that the girl I had been speaking to the previous night had left her number for me.

I thought about it for a while. I thought about not calling. That’s what most girls had done to me at this point, why not? I didn’t need a girlfriend. I was already twenty-two, almost twenty-three, and I had made it just fine without one so far. I had my dog, and my truck. I didn’t really need more…

So, I called her. Don’t know why, just did. We set up a date. Something simple and easy; a walk around the park.

I made the decision then and there; it was a cold, frosty September afternoon. We would walk around the park, in the cold, with Mr. Vance, my 85 pound husky/chow, and if she didn’t like him, I needed nothing to do with her. That was my escape route. If she didn't care for him, I wouldn’t care for her, because I wasn’t about to give up my dog or anything to do with him for some random girl I had met in a coffee shop.

So, I went to the park. There was a little snow already, a little sun, a little chill. It was a perfect day to be stood up.

She finally shows up, and I introduced her to Mr. Vance. Naturally, she was allergic.

Can you believe it? She was allergic to him. Her hands got itchy, her eyes watered, she sneezed like she was coming down with the plague, and later on, she even ended up getting a giant white bump on her chin that looked like a golf ball and a mosquito bite had gone and had a baby.

Of course, she loved him anyway, which is definitely the best part. It’s the most cliché part, too, but you gotta admit, that’s pretty cool. He was just too perfect, and she couldn’t help herself.

So, there he was. He was on our first vacation, in our wedding, on our honeymoon, in the car, in the house, in the bathtub, at the bookstore, at my wife’s coffee shop, everywhere. We took him wherever we went, we altered dreams around him, changed life goals for him, everything. We wanted to buy a sailboat on the coast and move aboard.

“Mr. Vance is getting older,” we said. “He wouldn’t like it, it can wait.”

So we waited.

“We’re not ready for kids yet,” I told my wife.

“But I want pictures of Vance with our first baby,” she had replied. “He’s getting old. I don’t want to miss it.”

It was true. We had to make some decisions then.

Our daughter was born in an April blizzard, two months after Mr. Vance had passed away. We never got those pictures of him with the baby, but it didn’t matter. We still thought about him, and we still do. Each time I look at my wife and daughter, I think of where I might be, or what might have happened had he not been there. He spent ten years being a constant part of every aspect of my life, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Do I believe that I wouldn’t have married my wife without him? That I wouldn’t have had a baby with her because of him? No, not really. I tend to believe that things that are meant to happen, happen whether we want them to or not. But it’s still fun to think about, and even tease my wife about sometimes. Dogs are special things, and Mr. Vance was no exception.

Do I have a single, special memory of him? Maybe. Not really. There are too many. But someday, when my daughter asks me to tell her about the old dog in the picture frame on the wall, I get to tell her how, allergies be damned, Mr. Vance swept in on a cold September afternoon, and gallantly won her mother’s heart.