31 Days to Write the Story of Your Family - Day 4: Family Beginnings

Day 4: Family Beginnings

I met my husband, Tony, at Penn State University.  We were both students studying in the university's graduate meteorology program.  He had already been there a year when I started.  I'm pretty sure that we casually met through mutual friends during my first semester, but it wasn't anything memorable.  I had an awful first semester.  I was extremely lonely, I felt like the classes and material were over my head, and I was really questioning what I was going to do in life.  I stayed in my apartment a lot, really only going out to go to class, the grocery store, or church.

My second semester I felt better; I had passed all of my classes with decent grades, and I felt like I was actually going to graduate some day.  I started hanging around a little more with some of the other meteorology students - going out to lunch, going to yoga classes, going out to bars in the evenings.  Tony was part of this group, so I started to see him more often and we were even in a class together that semester. It's probably horrible to say, but I don't actually remember the day or even month when we became a 'couple.'  It was sometime in the spring of 2002.  What I DO remember is he inviting me to a BIG family picnic back in his hometown that summer, right after we started dating.  I said no - I think I had only met his parents once before that, and I was terrified of being inundated by his LARGE extended family.  He understood.

I don't know about him, but I knew within a few months of our relationship that we would be married someday.  I hadn't had very long relationships in the past, mostly because I knew right away whether or not I would get along with someone in the long run.  We were engaged about a year after we met and then married the year after that.

My parents met in college; they were both students at Cleveland State University in the early 1970s.  I'm not sure about how exactly they met, whether through friends or at a particular location.  I should ask them.

My mom's parents met at a USO event in Cleveland, Ohio after WWII.  They were both armed forces veterans and belonged to the same Catholic War Veterans group.

My dad's parents lived on the same block, went to the same church, and were both children of Polish immigrants, so it was very much a neighborhood-type romance.