I remember that I first saw you at the very back of the class. I was positive I had seen you before. Everyone said they couldn’t see anybody new.  I was sure you had been a part of my life – maybe long, long ago. I had seen you somewhere, but where? I keep asking myself ‘where’?

Then one day you were gone. You just disappeared. I didn’t see you again, but you were still the thing nagging at the back of my brain. Who were you? How come I could see you when everybody else couldn’t? I did not understand how a person could be so silent, and yet be such a part of my life.

One day, years and years later, I saw you. At the back of the church. You were not there when I walked in, and you didn’t open the doors to get in. Just as I was beginning to fear that you were some hallucination that I was seeing in my old age, I remembered. Those three eerie months in the sixth grade when there was a boy sitting in the back of the class. You just sat there and listened to what the teacher had to say. You never said anything; you didn’t take notes at all. You just sat and listened to the teacher.

Now that I am looking back on these years of mystery that lead up to our love and marriage, I find it amazing how we fell in love. Two people. One of them loud and outgoing, the other one silent, mysterious and discreet, were happy together. Sometimes, even after all of these years, I wonder why I recognised you in the sixth grade from somewhere. Why did I notice you when no one else did? Why were you that itch in the back of my head that I could never scratch, and I just think, how is it possible?  Then I remember, Because I love you.