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A couple of years in the past, whereas residing on Kaua’i, I had a monthslong crush on a postman. It had grow to be a relentless supply of leisure for me and my closest mates. He was a tall and good-looking man with a grey beard, and there was one thing about him that intrigued me.
There was an indescribable air to him, a relaxed kindness that drew me to him. I discovered that his first identify was Uriah, and from some discreet reconnaissance, discovered that he was single, however apart from that, he was a clean slate. After I’d see him, I might clam up like a nervous adolescent, all social graces viciously abandoning me and leaving me speechless.
Sooner or later, I lastly summoned my nerve and scribbled a self-deprecating word with my cellphone quantity on a scrap of paper. I taped it inside my PO field along with his identify on the skin and drove house with a thousand butterflies filling my insides with each anxiousness and exhilaration.
Courtesy of Julia Reynolds
I believed I used to be getting rejected at first
Virtually two weeks handed, and I had quietly accepted that he wasn’t . I had a number of slips for packages I had been assiduously ignoring, mildly humiliated by the rejection and reluctant to return to the submit workplace. Ultimately, although, I made a decision to behave like an grownup and go retrieve my mail.
To my aid, one of many different guys was working the counter, and I handed him my yellow package deal slip. Uriah all of a sudden emerged from the again workplace, made a beeline for the counter, and took the slip out of his colleague’s hand. Our eyes met, and when he introduced my packages again, he shyly instructed me he’d name me. Apparently, he hadn’t identified who I used to be till that day. He known as that night time.
He instructed a stranger on a ferry he was going to make me his spouse
Our first date was going to Ke’e Seaside to look at the sundown, and issues moved shortly after. It was April, and I used to be leaving on the finish of Could to spend six weeks in Europe. I opened the exclusivity dialogue once we had been speaking about my upcoming journey, and I instructed him I wasn’t going to see different individuals, however I understood if he did. He instructed me, “Julia, not solely do I not need to see different individuals whilst you’re in Europe, I do not assume I need to see different individuals once more in any respect.”
This was a few month after our first date, and whereas his phrases crammed me with happiness, I made positive to elucidate that whereas I’d like to spend my life with him, I did not need to get married, and I by no means had. He mentioned he had by no means needed to get married earlier than both, however now he had modified his thoughts. As calm and type as ever, he mentioned he knew I’d come round.
After I was leaving Hawai’i for Europe, he flew with me to New England to fulfill my household. After just a few drinks at The Oar and Yellow Kittens on Block Island, on the ferry house, I heard him inform some guys he had simply met that he was going to marry me. I simply smiled and rolled my eyes.
Photograph credit score: Becky Elizabeth Britton
I noticed marriage as an excuse for complacency, however he modified every part
I might by no means seen marriage as a union I needed to enter into, as a result of I noticed {couples} dedicating much less vitality to the connection as soon as it was authorized. I witnessed individuals cease attempting as exhausting, taking each other as a right. When Uriah proposed in a tent in Maui six months after our first date, he had a wood ring in his hand that he had carved himself. It was just a few days earlier than his forty second birthday; we had taken the journey to Maui to rejoice. I had turned 41 just a few months earlier, in July.
He defined (on one knee in a chilly tent on a mountain) that the ring would not final, that it might break each few months, and every time he would carve me a brand new one. He instructed me that it was symbolic of his devotion to by no means changing into complacent, that he would by no means cease attempting his greatest to make me pleased. In fact, I mentioned sure.
Photograph credit score: Becky Elizabeth Britton
After we married, we moved 8,000 miles away
Three months later, in February 2024, we eloped on the identical seaside on Kaua’i the place we had our first date. We had a second marriage ceremony that spring and rented a home in Sicily to have a celebration in entrance of our households. Whereas we traveled across the Mediterranean on our honeymoon final summer season, we fell in love with the island of Sardinia and determined to start out a brand new life there.
We stop our jobs, I liquidated my inventory portfolio, and we purchased a 325-year-old home in Bosa to open as a mattress and breakfast, a longtime dream I might by no means fairly had the braveness to pursue. In 18 months, we went from being single and residing in Hawai’i to married and residing in Italy. I am on my third wood ring, and each has been extra stunning than the final.