Let’s face it, long-distance relationships are hard. Plus, adding in some collegiate deadlines, a whole slew of obligatory meetings and the pressures of weekend life doesn’t make maintaining a healthy love life any easier. Fortunately, though, some are able to manage these pressures with an unexpectedly beautiful outcome; maybe I’m biased though, since I like to think of myself as that “beautiful outcome.”
Now, a sophomore journalism and mass communication major here at Bonaventure, I’m reveling in single campus life—I’ve got myself to worry about and not much else.
For my father, a ‘92 Bonaventure alum, maintaining college life and his love life wasn’t quite as simple.
My parents’ 27-year-long relationship had humble beginnings in Bolton Landing, New York—which my family now proudly calls our hometown. Bolton Landing isn’t just our home though, it’s home to nearly 20,000 tourists in the summer months, all of whom flock to the area to enjoy the sweltering sun that beats down on Lake George, a 32-mile-long paradise that trademarks our rural stomping grounds.
My mother, a carefree Rhode Island native who had recently lost her father to a brain tumor, met my father at Twin Pines Resort—our family’s vacation resort that served as his summer employment. My mother and her family were yearly guests at my father’s resort, so both families bonded under the pines, with sand in their toes and birdsong overhead.
They were living a Nicholas Sparks’ fairytale; they saw each other two weeks a year, with hearts growing fonder and fonder at each summer solstice. Granted, my father was no “pretty boy” and my mom might have been arguably just as tough, but still, their relationship was far from conventional.
As time went on, my mother made her way to Rhode Island College and my father to Bonaventure, nearly seven hours apart . They were limited by dial-up connection calls and occasional visits—back when the Hickey Dining Hall offered a mere two meals a day and the Rathskeller didn’t look like a ghost town.
Instagram selfies, Facebook posts, unflattering Snapchats and sentimental tweets didn’t aid in their contact, so they looked forward to each coming summer—always hoping to see each other during the brisk winter months because, let’s be honest, 365 days apart creates more than just physical distance.
Just as graduation day came, so did their wedding day. At age 24, with degrees framed and after a surprise Mt. Marcy proposal—typical of my outdoorsy parents—my mother and father were engaged.
Their wedding ceremony, as humble as their relationship, consisted of a quaint Rhode Island church—with my mother’s train longer than the miles that separated them for years. As they walked down the aisle, between rickety, wooden pews, they became a walking testament to the idea that love is worth the wait.
Since, my father has worked in education for nearly 20 years and my mother has run the family business that brought her to her lover, undoubtedly an ironic outcome. With confidence that God brought them together in the most unexpected of ways, they face every new day side by side—something distance didn’t always allow them to do.
mcgurllt14@bonaventure.edu
