Who's up for a little story time?
First off, I apologize for this post in advance because while in my mind it is completely necessary, it is also undeniably self-serving. It's something I promised myself I'd do the night before my surgery, and I've finally got the energy to see this thing through.
You see, in the hours before my operation, the late-shift nurse was looking to make some casual conversation when she asked me what she probably thought was an innocuous question:
"How did you meet your wife?"
As I answered, it dawned on me that when faced with my mortality for the first time, one of my bigger regrets in life was that I
hadn’t told more people the story of how Lauren and I came to be. Not that it's in any way
necessary for people to know, nor is there any intrinsic benefit to anyone who hears it, it's just far and away the most illogical, amazing thing that's ever happened to me, and I fear I'd be doing myself a disservice by not getting it down on paper.
So if that sort of thing doesn't interest you, by all means, STOP READING. But if you continue, know that this story is written without a hint of hyperbole; it is 100% true. (And long…)
December 2002 was much like each month before it; stretching back a solid four years. Residing in Denver, Colorado, I lived a life of complete self-absorption. Each day was the same: wake up, train for triathlon, survive a day of work at
PwC, train some more, fall asleep, repeat. My job was of secondary concern; all that truly mattered to me was athletic performance.
As a result, I
wasn’t a particularly fun person to be around. Not for my friends, who missed their old drinking buddy, not for my co-workers, who knew my head
wasn’t really in my work, and certainly not for any women that found their way into my life, who quickly learned that I
didn’t have enough energy left over after swimming, cycling, running, and working to commit to any type of relationship.
And sadly, I was just fine with that. For a number of reasons, all rather pathetic in retrospect, I committed that period of my life to racing. I had become bitter and jaded by my corporate existence, and I found a lot of the instant gratification missing in my work life in my athletic pursuits.
That same cynicism carried over into my dating life, and to be frank, I simply stopped believing in the storybook concept of “love.” I had spent time with a number of women over the previous few years, but I never had any delusions that I was supposed to spend my life with any of them. I knew them for what they were: good people who were fun to be around, but never serious candidates to be a lifelong companion. I grew to look at the women in my life the same way I looked at my career: I pegged myself as entirely too complicated to find a job that made me happy in all respects; why should a woman be any different? There’s a reason that the divorce rate in this country is inching over 50%, and I wrote it off to the increasing complexities of the average person and the resulting unlikelihood that there was someone else out there that could manage, cope, and learn to appreciate said complexities.
As a result, I was in no hurry to find love. I was content living my selfish existence, and I dealt with any loneliness by increasing my commitment to my bike, to the trail, to the pool.
As tradition dictated, I headed home to NJ for the 2002 holidays on December 18
th. Soon after, I got a call from my best friend Dean, inviting me to a Christmas party at my buddy Les’ house. I can clearly remember wavering, as Christmas parties in your late twenties are dominated by close-knit groups of friends, and what did I have to add living 2,000 miles away?
I decided to go, however, as Dean and Les are fantastic guys, and I figured if nothing else I’d spend the night catching up with them. So I drove the twenty minutes or so over to Les’ house, grabbed a beer, and sat down with Dean. That’s when everything changed.
Lauren walked in, and absolutely floored me. She was, without question, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. She was…perfect. It
wasn’t enough that she was as beautiful as she was; it’s that unlike most beautiful women, she seemed to have no idea just how beautiful she was. She lit up any room she walked into, yet it
didn’t appear to matter to her that anyone even knew she was there. I was fascinated, and I had to know more.
Before I’d even said hello to Lauren, I leaned in to Dean and asked, “Who is that?” Dean gave me a confused look, and answered, “You know Lauren Fares, don’t you?”
I
didn’t, but as Dean explained why I should, I
couldn’t believe it. The opportunities to meet had been more than plentiful; in fact, the shock was that we were strangers. We grew up in the same small town, but Lauren went to Catholic schools while I spent my formative years as a public school punk. My brother knew her sister; my sister knew her brother. Stranger still, our parents owned homes one block apart on Long Beach Island. And if that
weren’t enough, her college roommate at St.
Joes was my senior year high-school girlfriend. How could we have not met?
Well, one way or another we
hadn’t, but that was about to change. I said hello, and spent the rest of the night making small talk with Lauren and her friends. She never showed any particular interest in me, but truthfully, I
didn’t care. She was amazing to listen to; so smart, so sweet, so absolutely lacking in pretension. I was falling in love by the second, and by the time I left that party I was convinced of something, something I would share with anyone that would listen: I had just met the girl I was going to marry.
Now, as I mentioned before, this
wasn’t supposed to happen to me. I
wasn’t looking for love, particularly not love 2,000 miles away in a state I had no plans to return to. But I
couldn’t deny what I felt, which is the simple truth that I was supposed to find her, love her, marry her, and take care of her for the rest of my life.
The next day, I was standing in the kitchen with my mother, who asked me how my night went. I had to tell her. “Mom, you’re not going to believe this, but I met the girl I’m going to marry last night.” She heard me out, and then raised the question I
hadn’t yet considered, “What’s your next step?”
Hmmm. Good point. I had nothing: no phone number, no further meeting set up, nothing. As certain as I was that she was the one, I
hadn’t really thought this whole thing out. What I did have, however, was an invitation from some of Lauren’s friends to join them that night as they swung by Lauren’s family Christmas party. I knew I had to see her again, so I picked up the phone and called one of her friends and set up a time to meet that night so we could head over to the party. And maybe, just maybe, if things played out right, I’d get a chance to tell Lauren how I felt.
Arriving at the party, I quickly met the entire Fares clan: Mom, Dad, brother, cousins, aunts, Lauren’s boyfriend, wait...what? Boyfriend? I didn’t remember any boyfriend being mentioned last night?
You’d think that would have done me in, but it
didn’t. I simply sat and watched her flawlessly handle the complicated family/friends/boyfriend dynamic, and as she sang Christmas Carols with the 30+ party members, I was more convinced than ever: she was perfect, and whatever happened to me in life and wherever I ended up, I would love this girl in some capacity for the rest of my days. Even if she never knew it.
As I prepared to leave the party, I noticed her father standing alone in the family room. I can remember it as clearly as if it happened yesterday. I thought to myself, "You might want to go over and say hello; it may come in handy some day.” So I did, and we spent several minutes talking about life in Colorado, the potential for law school, etc… Eventually, someone else came over to speak to him, so I said my goodbyes, left the party, and left Lauren, presumably forever.
December 26
th, I was on plane from New Jersey to Portland, Oregon, where I would spend my New Years Eve at a client site. Six hours is an awfully long time to spend on a plane, particularly when you’
ve just had your heart pulled out of your chest.
As I crossed the country, something dawned on me. From the moment Lauren walked into Les’ party, I was certain of one thing: in 27 years of existence, nobody, and I mean nobody, had ever affected me the way she did. How do you not share that with the person? What did I have to lose? I was 2,000 miles away, she had a boyfriend; in all likelihood, I would never see her again.
But thinking of all the times I, like most people, questioned my self worth, or hated what looked back in the mirror, why should she be any different? And if she did have the same doubts, did have moments of weakness where she wondered what she had to offer, why
wouldn’t she want to hear that someone, somewhere, thought she was as beautiful and wonderful as it comes.
So I made up my mind: I would call her, and I would tell her. I’d skip the whole “I’m going to marry you,” bit because it was nonsensical. I was in Denver, she was teaching special education in New Jersey, she had a boyfriend, I was a headcase, why bother? If I was right about that part, fate would take care of the rest. At that moment, that part
wasn’t important; what was, however, was that she learn just how amazing she was.
Two days into my stay in Portland, I started the “find Lauren’s phone number” quest. I called my buddy Fish from Jersey, and asked if he had it. When he asked why, I explained what had happened, and he encouraged me that I was doing the right thing. He gave me the number to her family house, which eventually led to Lauren’s apartment number. It took days to muster the courage, but on New Years Day 2003, I dialed her number. Answering machine…
I left a relatively short, certainly rambling, “It’s Tony
Nitti from last week…can you give me a call when you get chance?”
The next afternoon, I was walking through the mall attached to my client’s office after grabbing a late lunch. My phone rang, and my heart stopped. It was her….
I answered, but I was in no position to say what I had to say, so I asked her if I could call her right back.
Walking back to the office, I ran through everything in my mind that I wanted to say. I had one chance to let this girl know how I felt, and I needed to get it right.
Returning to the office, I grabbed a conference room, locked the door, drew a deep breath, and dialed the number. When she answered, I made a couple of seconds of small talk, and then launched into instant embarrassment. I told her everything…That she was the most beautiful, most amazing person I’d ever met, and I
couldn’t live the rest of my life without her knowing. I knew she had a boyfriend, I knew I would likely never see her again, but how could I not tell her? I explained to her that there may come a time in her life when she
wasn’t happy with who she was, and in that moment, it may help her to know that someone thought she was the most beautiful person on the planet. If I could accomplish just that, than humiliating myself on this call was worth it.
Lauren, to her credit, simply listened. She took it all in, probably struggled with the standard female response of “what is he after” when a guy lays a string of compliments on you, before realizing that I was clear across the country, and I
wasn’t asking for a date, or for her to feel the same way about me, or for, well, anything. I just wanted her to know how wonderful she was, and she was gracious enough to allow me to do just that.
When we hung up, I felt at peace. I knew that things had likely gone as far as they would, but again, that
wasn’t the point. The point was to be able to move on in my life without regret, and I could now do so. If I was going to end up with this girl, I had done my part. The rest was seemingly out of my hands. So life went on…
As winter continued on, other areas of my life were reaching a crossroads. At work, I had been promoted to tax manager, and I was now spending two weeks a month traveling around the country, dealing with huge clients on the west coast. I was also attending graduate school part time at the University of Denver’s Graduate Tax Program. I hated my job, but loved the class time. That told me something.
What it told me was that my career was progressing faster than my brain. I was getting promoted and handed more responsibility, but I
hadn’t actually learned shit. I was getting dumber by the day, delving into the world of client hand-holding and large project management, things that neither made me happy nor appealed to my desire for intellectual stimulation.
The classroom, as you might imagine, was the exact opposite. It was pure information; tax law stripped down to its purest form. Each night I left class, I was significantly brighter than when I had arrived, and that appealed to me in a big, big way.
I plugged along, unsure of what options I really had. I needed money, so walking away from the job
didn’t seem like an option, particularly when the full-time graduate tax program was 29K. With my firm paying for my part-time classes, I was getting free education; quit the job, lose the tuition.
February came around, and as Valentine’s Day approached, a certain girl popped into my mind. Against my better judgment, I asked my old high-school girlfriend for Lauren’s email, and then in a gesture of unbridled stupidity, sent Lauren a song on February 14
th.
This song here…
Lauren responded, keeping things generic: “I loved the song. It was a great one. Take care of yourself.” Again, it
didn’t upset me. After all, I knew she had a boyfriend, what was I expecting? But when you listen to the words of that song, man….it was just too perfect to not send.
April arrived, and I was stuck in Portland as the Final Four approached. It had been a tradition of mine to sneak back to New Jersey and surprise my Dad whenever I could for the final weekend of the NCAA tournament, and this year was no different. I made the plans two weeks in advance, cleared it with my clients and my firm, and hopped on a plane the Friday prior to the Final Four for the six hour ride back to NJ.
Arriving in New Jersey, my brother Mike picked me up from the airport so I could surprise my Dad at the restaurant at which my family was having dinner. Before we could hit the restaurant, however, I had to stop by the house to address the dozen emails I had received on my phone from my Portland client. There was nothing I could do: they knew I was going home, knew I was surprising my father, but they just
didn’t care. They wanted answers, and they wanted it now. So as I logged onto my laptop and started responding to request after request, my brother Mike, in a sentence I will never forget, said to me, "Dude, you’re 27. How important can you be?”
And it hit me like a bolt of lighting…he’s absolutely freaking right. This work
isn’t that important. And I’m
certainly not that important. They’re doing this to me because nobody cares anymore. There is no delineation between work time and personal time; your attention is expected whenever the client needs it, regardless of personal pursuits.
And just like that I was done. I knew I wanted out of that life, that pressure. I just needed a way, and school was the answer. In March, I had finished my third class at DU, and the professor for all three classes had been the director of the program, the guy that called all of the shots. I cared immensely about school, diving into it with everything I had, and was fortunate to land the top grade in each of the three classes. Apparently, this
didn’t go unnoticed by the director, a brilliant and kind man by the name of Mark
Vogel.
Professor
Vogel called me at work one day in March, and extended the following invitation. Should I ever wish to attend the program full-time, he would “help” me with tuition. I had no idea what that meant, but I was about to find out.
I called Professor
Vogel and told him my plan. I was going to leave my job at
PwC, and head to DU full time. But...not until the fall. Until then, I was going to spend the summer getting my life back together,
lifeguarding on Long Beach Island in New Jersey and essentially spending two months forgetting I’m an adult.
To this Professor
Vogel simply responded, “Come see me in the fall, a couple of days before class starts.” Wait….don’t I need to fill out some forms, apply for a scholarship, something? “Come see me before school,” he answered. Not exactly the safest way to walk away from a secure job, but what did I have to lose?
So I placed one more call, to Mark
Dileo, captain of the Surf City Beach Patrol. At this point, a
Nitti had been on the squad for nearly two decades, and Mark had developed a soft spot in his heart for the three
Nitti brothers. He guaranteed me a spot, and my mind was made up. I’d quit my job in late May, spend the summer on the beach, return to DU in September, finish the program the following June, and figure out the rest of life from there.
Now, what I haven’t mentioned in any of these plans is what they referred to in
Good Will Hunting as “finding out about a girl.” As late May neared, I had no reason to believe that anything would change with Lauren. For all I knew, she still had a boyfriend…hell, they could even be engaged.
But I had her phone number, I had her email address…why not just tell her I was coming home and see where she stands? I spent a lot of time debating this as my departure date grew closer, and I made a choice, one that may strike you as strange.
From the beginning, everything about this girl has been different. Everything. She made me believe in concepts -- fate and love -- that I had spent my entire life mocking. As I packed up my car, I believed then, as I had six months prior, that I would spend the rest of my life with her. Now I was heading back to her state, and I truly believed that if I was right about everything, the rest would take care of itself. A huge leap, I agree, but this part of my life was about huge leaps.
There are few things as universally disparate from life as a CPA than
lifeguarding on the ocean. No thinking involved, no confining cubicle, just sun, sand, and enough 19 year-old co-workers to make you forget all about 401(k) balances and mortgage rates.
I cherished my time on the stand, not so much because I
wasn’t in an office, but because for the first time in five years, I felt alive. It was such a pure life: sit the stand, workout; sit the stand, workout. Over and over and over again. Take the boat out for a row, the board out for a paddle, go for a swim in the ocean, and get paid for it. Life was good.
As a new guard, I could have been stationed on any of Surf City’s 24 streets. But Mark, kind man that he is, squeezed me in on 4th Street, meaning I was one block from my house, but more importantly, I was stationed at the end of the street a certain girl lived on.
As July rolled around, I still hadn’t seen Lauren. For all I knew, she could have moved in with her boyfriend, and the beach wasn’t in her plans for the summer. Even worse, I had come down with a wicked case of bronchitis, and had been obscenely sick for almost a week.
My first day back on the stand, still running a high fever but embarrassed to miss freaking lifeguarding of all things for sick time, I ran home during one of my breaks for a quick lunch. As I rode my bike back up 4th Street to return to the stand, I saw someone I thought I recognized. It took me a couple of seconds to place, but I did: it was Lauren’s father! I immediately thought back to that Christmas party, and the choice I made and I thought to myself, “fate.”
A quick shout over, and her father and I caught up as we walked onto the beach together. As we neared the top of the dune, he mentioned, “Come say hi to Lauren. She’s down on the beach!”
And that, my friends, is the very definition of fate. I said hello, offered her a Starburst, and she suggested we grab some ice cream that night. For three hours we talked and talked, and I did my best to hide the fact that I still had a 101 degree fever and bad chills. At the end of the night, I walked her home, and we spent a quiet couple of minutes in front of her house. I thought of everything I had wanted to say to her for the past seven months, and this is what came out:
“Lauren, I have had seven months to remember only the best parts of you. It would have been entirely too easy to build you up in my mind to an unattainable reality. But after spending tonight with you, the only thing I’m sure of is that the way I’ve remembered you didn’t even begin to do you justice.”
We’ve been together ever since. There was never any struggle, never any break up/make up, just… us, from Day 1.
When September came around, I had to go back to Denver and finish grad school. Luckily, Professor Vogel came through with a full scholarship, so when I graduated the following May, I had a small amount of savings left over.
As I packed up my life in Denver to move back to New Jersey and start my life with Lauren, I knew exactly what to do with that money. I searched and searched and searched, and when the right jeweler pulled out the right ring, I knew it right away. I took the last of my savings, and on June 26th, 2004 we were engaged.
Looking back at it now, it is completely illogical that I had to move 2,000 miles away to meet and marry a girl from my hometown, and we would end up living in Aspen, Colorado together. When I think about the string of events that had to occur for that first meeting to not have turned into a lifetime of “What ifs,” it’s truly remarkable to me that we ended up together.
For 33 years, the one thing I’ve been certain of is that I don’t know anything about anything. But it turns out I got one thing right.
THIS GUY!!!
To be fair, Tuesday through Thursday were rather rough days for me. I don't know whether I was paying the price for being on my feet too much last weekend, or if I was going through a new stage in the healing process, but the head pain and swelling seemed to get decidedly worse over those three days. Just as my frustration was peaking, I woke up Friday feeling fantastic, and had far and away my best day post-op. I have a strong feeling it's going to be two steps forward, one step back until I'm fully recovered. 
