June 1997, Dublin
It rained the day I met my husband. I was only 17, dressed in some sort of amazing grungey/vintage ensemble I assume, complete with obligatory fishnets and ex-army boots.... if I remember correctly, my hair was about waist length and dyed about 6 different colours (pretty picture eh? Shut up... it was the 90s!!) I often wonder what might have happened if the sun had been shining that afternoon. (You will come to know that my mind is made up of approximately 99% 'What ifs?'). Back to the fateful day..... I'd been waiting and my friend was tardy. I'm completely justified in using the word 'tardy' because he is American. Dame Street can be a wind tunnel and you can go from freshly pressed to shipwreck chic in moments. And then I spotted the two boys, sitting, sheltering under the giant concrete canopy of the Central Bank. I knew one of them for sure, but the mascara started bleeding into my eyes from the rain and the other boy was quickly a blur. So, running in that kind of dainty/ridiculous way that most girls instinctively HAVE to do when it's raining, I made my way in their direction and climbed the steps to sit down beside them. Me and my friend... "J" chatted, both tried to bum cigarettes from each other and then he decided to leave me with blurry boy, without even introducing us, to go to a nearby shop and get some smokes.
Wiping the mascara away with my sleeve, blurry boy becomes A LOT cuter. He was sporting an amazing 'Wildman of Borneo' look, long dark hair and a beard that would have made Abraham Lincoln jealous. The boy that would become my man, and I knew it. He got me. He saw right inside me and surprisingly, it didn't confuse or terrify him. I remember he bought me a mug of tea that day; in the Well-Fed Cafe. I remember his eyes, looking into my eyes (I have always had a 'thing' for eyes) and suddenly whether from some kind of cupid-esque fairy dust or possibly loose bits of mascara, I could only see him.
For those of you who don't know, the term 'idiot grin' describes the kind of smile that hurts your face, that embarrasses you when you're walking down the street by yourself, that's so wide and so oblivious to logic and situation you just know that everybody on the bus is staring and wondering "what's got her so bleedin' happy?!" and gives the game away EVERY TIME when you see your Mum, best friend or anyone else who knows you. The idiot grin has it's own soundtrack.... that snippet of song you heard while he took a sip of his hot chocolate, you don't know what the song is but now it's the most immaculate series of sounds that encapsulates the absolute perfection and utter joy that is him, and his eyes. This smile is, at least when you're alone and it can be fully unleashed, not the least bit idiotic really. It won't make sense to anyone but you and that's splendour, utter bliss. Nobody else in the whole world could possibly know just how wonderful you feel right now. You want to scream, dance and tell the whole world how amazing he is, and how all of a sudden, life is just sublime.
I had the biggest idiot grin on my face from the moment he walked me to my bus stop that night and hugged me. The rain had stopped by then.
