How We Met, Part 1.

A friend on facebook requested the story of our meeting. Here it is for the first time in print, recreated in glorious third-person narrative.

In the autumn of 2010, Tom Froese and his fiancee Mandy traveled east from their home in Vancouver to visit his family in Ontario. His sister Kat had recently moved to Ottawa for work, and while visiting her Tom and Mandy brought her by the Orthodox Cathedral in that grand brick city. En route, Tom thought, "I wonder if Jesse will be there." Jesse, perpetual wanderer across the Canadian hinterland, had frequently wandered through Tom's Vancouver, and once after a party had even slept on Tom's couch. According to the last information Tom possessed, Jesse lived in Ottawa too, and attended said cathedral. "I wonder if Jesse will be there," Tom repeated, this time aloud. He liked this idea. Then he looked at his sister with a very pleased smile spreading across his bearded face, and said, "Kat, you would like Jesse."

Jesse was not there. The church was closed, and their visit was brief. They didn't return.

Yet Tom became preoccupied with this idea. A few weeks later, he decided to act, and sent emails out to Kat and Jesse. To Kat he sent a baffling picture of Jesse, in which he stood bent almost double in front of a large, Cold-War-looking machine full of mysterious dials, a rather crazed look in his eyes. Little could she know how CLEVER Jesse was being here, standing in front of the controls for his church's electronic bells, posing as "the hunchback bellringer of Annunciation Cathedral". Still, when Tom's email asked "Any interest in this fellow?" she couldn't deny a slight curiosity. But she was not about to play the hunter. He would have to come after her.

Tom contacted Jesse at the same time, telling him that he was the kind of guy Kat would like to meet. He also sent a picture, of Kat posing with an ice cream cone and a smoochy face behind a cardboard cutout of a what appeared to be a busty germanic beermaid. Jesse was quite taken with the photo, but also quite unavailable. "TOM!" he thought, "I just LEFT Ottawa! Don't do this to me now!"

This was true. After three years in Ottawa, Jesse had decided to return to his old home in Vancouver. Ottawa is a fine city, but a dull one. It is a city of bureaucrats. It is a city that smells like a museum. It is a city that empties itself into the suburbs by eight every night. Jesse, at 28, realized that he might be a bachelor for a while, and decided he might as well do it somewhere interesting. Like Vancouver, for instance. He finished his master's degree and departed the capital, wandering gradually westward, just months before Tom's message.

"Sorry, Tom," he replied. "I'm moving to Vancouver. I'm not going back."

Meanwhile, Tom and Mandy prepared for their wedding. Kat prepared for her westward journey, and prepared to give her speech. Jesse finally arrived in Vancouver, the long-awaited dream of three lonely years in Ottawa, on New Year's Eve. When he received a last-minute invitation to the wedding, he knew exactly what Tom was scheming. But he didn't say No.

The wedding was three weeks later. Tom spent much of that time, whatever he could spare from preparation, dropping heavy-handed hints at Kat and Jesse about their impending meeting. The day before the big event was booked with a series of events for family and friends --- a brunch, skating, hot chocolate, rehearsal. Kat arrived at the diner for the brunch that day a little nervous. Tom had built this meeting up so much, but who was this guy anyway? Jesse walked in late, and walked right past her to sit with his friends. "He's obviously not interested," she concluded.

Quite the contrary. The night before, Jesse had been drinking potato vodka, and he was just in the process of discovering he had a rather severe intolerance to potatoes. He spent the entire night puking. Then he washed himself up as well as he could, staggered downstairs, and announced in the most articulate slur he could manage, "I'm off to meet my future wife."

At the diner he actually didn't see her at first, as she was sitting at a side table, away from the long table where most of the guests were gathered. But after sitting down with his friends he saw her across the room, and knew what he had to do. He slammed his coffee, dragged his feet across the room and said, "You must be the famous Kat Froese."

She was.


End of Part 1.

(Jesse.)