Can You Hear Me?

I could begin with my childhood, but that wouldn't be right. After all, how can our stories begin without that of how our parents met?
My father was an American, born and raised in his birth country. My mother was German, born in Stuttgart, and also grew up in her birth country.
After joining the army, my father was stationed in Baumholder, Germany. While stationed, he dated a woman named Catia. She was best friends with my mother, Caterina. Both shared the nickname Cati, which was also a little spark of humor between them. My mother was engaged to a German soldier, at the time. However, when she met my father, something else ignited and the two fell in love. When my mother was nineteen, she and my father were wed. When she was twenty four, she gave birth to me. We moved state side, when I was one year and nine months old, due to my father's mother having a cancer of the bone marrow.
She had tried three times to have a girl, but ended up with boys. So, being the first girl born of my father's side in over a century, it was a special gift for my grandmother to meet me and for us to have each other in the other's lives.

When I was about three years old, however, my parents divorced. This part is quite typical. My mother had been cheating on my father and a couple neighbors had told my father about a man's car being at the house while dad was at work. So, he came home early one day...only to discover them in his bed. Being the second time, the first being back in Germany, my father could not take the heart break and their marriage came to an end.
Both wanted custody of me, though for different reasons.
My father wanted me because he truly cared about me and I was his pride and joy. My mother wanted me to spite my father, knowing how much he loved me. It was an act of cruelty, to take away something so precious to him after he'd just left his wife.
In the end, even though my mother had acquired custody of me first, I went with dad. I missed him and was tired of my mother ignoring me at every turn and showing just how much she resented my very existence.

Growing up, there were things that my father and I bonded and butted heads over.
Cooking though, was one thing we always enjoyed. My father is a retired chef, so cooking with his daughter was always a great joy for him.
I even told him, as a child, that I would never marry a man who could not cook. And if by some weird and messed up chance I did, he'd sure learn!
Now, at nineteen and a half years old, I am married to a wonderful man. Though we didn't know each other, we grew up around each other since kindergarten. We were in the same school system, until maybe junior or senior high school.
We met in 2012, in the summer right after our Junior years in high school. However, we only dated for about a month. On and off, until June of 2013, we did not speak much. In June of 2013, we started to spend time together again. In July, I gathered up what courage I had and asked him back. He said he needed time to think about it, which was understandable. He said yes, though. On September seventh, we began packing to move out of the town I grew up in. In the middle of it, he got down on one knee and proposed with the wedding ring my mother had worn when she was married to my father.

Though we didn't know until November tenth, I became pregnant by my husband in the first week of October. For personal reasons, we decided to forgo the Spring wedding we'd planned on and we were wed on December second. The reason why I originally wanted to do a Spring wedding was mainly because I wanted to do an old school European style wedding. Where we lived, there were two ponds and a little bit of wooded area. I was going to make and arch with him out of the thick tree vine and put flowers in the arch as well. I had such a beautiful mental image of everything, but that was not meant to be. Instead, we were wed in the town house building of the town I grew up in. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret where or how we were wed. It was still a small wedding, with those closest to us of who could come, and neither of us could have asked for more. There were two after parties, as well. First, there was a lunch over at a restaurant called The Putnam Inn. That was hosted by my surrogate grandmother, Ann, and she even bought us a small wedding cake that was incredibly delicious. Later that evening, my father held a dinner party back at Oakalla Lake for friends and family. Growing up, I was only a fifteen minute walk away from me at all times. The drive back to the lake was also the drive that led to our house. So, being at a place on such a special place was a wonderful topper to such an occasion. For me, it really is a once in a lifetime experience. I will never marry again, even if something or someone takes my husband from me. My love for him is so much that to lose him would rip such a hole in my heart and life that I'd look at any pass as such an outrage that I might be tempted to strike at them for daring to do so at all.

Now, eight and a half months after moving out of the house I grew up in, I live with my husband. Along with us is his mother, brother, uncle, and my father. Had we another place to go when we decided to move back in September, we would not have come here.