We don't know what love is

Greg was never a romantic type of person, so when we first started dating our spot was Walmart’s parking lot. Our dates consisted of the two of us sitting in the trunk of his Jeep, sharing cigarettes and a very unhealthy just-bought meal. And while we consumed that cig, he would try to communicate to me how dangerous for our health was smoking. And I would laugh, a bit because he was a hypocrite and a bit because his sign language was a disaster. He would mess up the hand movement and end up saying total disconnected words. I would laugh, yes, but I appreciated his efforts in my heart. No other guy would ever even try to be sweet to me, or just try talking to me. I knew that I was called ‘Deaf Laura’ and even though I couldn’t actually hear them, I knew that people laughed at me. And if they weren’t laughing at me, they were treating me like I was a charity mission to them. So, in the end, I was either made fun of or I was felt sorry for. Either way, this is how everybody always treated me. Everybody but Greg. He treated me differently. Actually, he did not. He treated me the way he treated everyone else: nicely but sarcastic all the time. And that made me feel ordinary and special at the same time. He would borrow books from the library and watch tutorials on youtube just to learn how to sign. At first, we communicated via text, even when we were together. Slowly he learned how to use ASL’s basic words and we replaced our phones with hand gestures and mouthing. Our favourite topics to ‘talk’ about were the Marvel Universe (mostly the cinematic one, since he read just a few of the comics) and books. We spent hours discussing whether we would be on team Cap or team Iron Man, or which of the Crows was the best among the six of them. As I said earlier, Greg wasn’t romantic at all, so our love language consisted in offering each other cigarettes, exchanging annotated books, and sending memes of our favourite superheroes on Instagram. A first love, a teen one, the one you’d never forget. That was all that it seemed, nothing more. Something that was made for it to end as soon as high school finished. That type of love you don’t call ‘love’ because you’re both too scared to use those four letters. In fact, I reckon we never said “I love you” during those years. Once I dared say “I like you very much”, but the only answer I got was a laugh and a timid kiss. We both thought that it was destined to end soon, so we silently agreed to never talk about our future. We thought it would have been impossible to see the other in our own lives after school. He was obviously going to college and becoming even more of a nerd, if possible, and I would have stayed in our hometown, being disabled and all. 

But we were wrong. Oh boy, the way we were certain that we weren’t meant to be, still makes us laugh. The thing is, we never fell out of love. Actually, we fell into our feelings each day that passed. I don’t even know how it happened. It just did. High school ended and we met outside Walmart on the last day before he left for college. We were ready, or at least we thought we were, to say goodbye. But when he mimed correctly the words ‘it’ ‘is’ and ‘over’, instead of crying I started laughing. A silent laugh for me, a disgraceful sound for everybody else, and the most amazing thing he could hear for Greg. I just laughed because I knew, there and then, that it couldn’t possibly be true. After a good minute of disbelief, he opened his mouth and started laughing as well. I couldn’t hear it but I could see the laugh and joy and all the love. And even when we stopped laughing, those feelings were in the air. I remember I had a thousand questions, like how we would have lasted long distance, but I couldn’t care less at that moment, because we loved each other and that was a fact that even my deafness couldn’t deny. We stayed in the parking lot until the moon was high, sharing cigarettes and hugging. The day after, he left with his Jeep full of his stuff. Before leaving he stopped at my house just to sign me ‘see you next month’. His ASL was still full of mistakes but it was understandable. Seeing him leave was painful, but we both knew it would have been a long way down if we wanted to last. And it was, I won’t lie about it: our journey was a rocky road. All the texts, all the video calls, and the letters weren’t enough. They weren’t like hanging out in the truck. But we did it. Each month he came back, we spent some quality time at the sweet old Walmart, and then he left again. But each time was less hard, and each time we saw each other we were more in love. That feeling, it was weird and mysterious but it was dramatically beautiful. And nowadays, we still don’t know what love actually is, if not anything more than what we feel for each other every single day. 

While he was in college I opened my small online shop where I sell my drawings. Sometimes even Greg’s parents commissioned me some art projects. When I had time, and sometimes I still do this when I’m not looking after the kids, I used to draw or paint Greg's face. But the face of whom you love is the hardest to capture because what you can design will never beat the beauty that God’s hands created. I have never shown Greg any of those art pieces, even when I know that he would just love them. 

After he finished his major and found a job near our hometown, we got engaged. Again, he isn’t romantic but rather simple in his gestures, so when he proposed he just got on one knee at the park and mouthed the words ‘will’ and ‘you’. He had time to say just those two words I was already hugging him and nodding and crying. The wedding took place only after a month, and we were the two happiest human beings on the surface of the Earth. At the age of 28, I got pregnant and our little family started. 

17 years of marriage, four kids, and many difficulties later, here we are. Still at Walmart's lot (in a different state, but it’s still Walmart), still in the trunk of our car (that instead of a Jeep is a family van), and still sharing cigarettes (those are still the same, we refuse to pass onto the electronic ones).