Member-only story
The biggest moment of love in my 40+ years on Earth
It was about twenty-three years ago. Many years have passed but I will always remember it.
I’ve been together with my wife since 1999. We were young when we met.
This story though is not about how we met.
We had the wildest summer after we met but then I had to go away. I was starting my undergraduate degree at Cambridge. I tried not to think about it — the inevitability of our long-distance relationship and the pain that comes with it but the moment came in late September 1999. I boarded the British Airways Moscow-London flight. I was flying into uncertainty. Will we keep our love? Will we be together?
I’d taken that flight many times before when I headed to Stowe, the boarding school where I studied. It should have felt familiar. This time it was different. This British Airways flight was robbing me of my love, the true love I’d barely gotten to enjoy, the love that had turned my life upside down. Unlike Stowe where my parents sent me, Cambridge was my choice and my achievement, but that realization didn’t help. Instead of rushing to embrace my life’s biggest achievement, I felt like I was surrendering to it.
