The two children

At 10:30 in the morning on the last Friday in January 2001, the Greyhound bus pulled out of the Washington DC station onto North Capitol Street. It chugged along its route, turning this way and that and finally getting on the Beltway from Georgia Avenue near Silver Spring, Maryland. The bus was bound for Columbus, Ohio, by way of Pittsburgh. The boy, with a window seat in the rear right side of the bus, had a ticket as far as Hagerstown, Maryland.

The boy had never been to Pennsylvania before, save that little stretch of I-95 that connects Delaware with New Jersey through Philadelphia. He was skipping Chinese class this day, on a new adventure to visit the new girl he'd met through an old friend and had been talking to for a few months. After talking on that newfangled device AOL Instant Messenger, they were finally to meet in person.

The boy had brought his discman along for the ride and stared out the window at all the cars as the bus passed all of the suburbs in Montgomery County, Maryland. North of Clarksburg the interstate narrowed to two lanes and they began to enter more rural area. The bus stopped in Frederick, Maryland, to pick up passengers. The bus filled up. A graying man, around age 50, sat down next to the boy. He took his headphones off to be polite. The man asked the boy where he was going. The boy replied that he was going to Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, to meet a girl. Turnabout is fair play, so the boy asked the man the same question. The man was going to Pittsburgh to meet his son, whom he hadn't seen since his son was around 4 or 5 years old.

As the bus passed over the Catoctin Mountains, and the Appalachian Trail bridge crossed Interstate 70, the boy noticed there was snow on the ground. Snow was not something he was used to. This year, his first year of college in Washington DC, was the first time he had ever seen it snow twice in the same winter. As if to further emphasize Mother Nature's point that he was not in Georgia anymore, the Potomac river froze over that year. The bus came down the mountain and stopped behind the McDonald's in Hagerstown. The boy got off and had lunch while he waited an hour to change buses.

At 1:00 the Carolina Trailways bus pulled up at the shack. It was bound for Harrisburg by way of Waynesboro, Chambersburg, Shippensburg, Mechanicsburg, and Carlisle. The bus got off on US 11, the Molly Pitcher Highway, that paralleled Interstate 81. At the Pennsylvania border the boy smiled at the sign marking the Mason-Dixon line, and enjoyed the irony of taking a Carolina Trailways bus into Pennsylvania. In the large rural swaths between small towns in the Cumberland Valley, the rolling cornfields were covered in more than a foot of snow. The houses, made of stone, were built differently than anything he had seen in Georgia. In the booming suburbs north of Atlanta, the houses were built quickly - and cheaply. These houses in Pennsylvania were old - and obviously built to last.

The bus drew into the town of Shippensburg, past the post office that announced SHIPPENSBURG PENNSYLVANIA 17257. The boy smiled, knowing the letters that he had written to the girl while they were getting to know each other had passed through that place. The bus stopped at a drug store. The boy gathered his things and passed the three other sleeping people on the bus to alight in the college town of Shippensburg. The girl was there, waiting for him.

Suddenly months of imagining what he would do on their meeting failed him. For as much as he had planned what he would do or say, words and confident actions were hard to come by at that very moment. "Um, hi." he stammered. They embraced. Neither the boy nor the girl owned a car. The girl had prevailed upon her friend who did own a vehicle to drive them from the university to the bus stop, just a few miles. They piled in the car and returned to school. The girl showed him around, and re-introduced him to his old friend, through whom they had met. He and his old friend had changed too much since they had known each other - they were never more than polite acquaintances since.

There was a school dance that night in the Cumberland Union Building, "the cub" as all the students called it. The boy and the girl and all her freshman herd of friends went to dinner in the dining hall. The girl introduced the boy to Lynne and Amy and several others; Lynne an old friend from childhood, Amy a new friend in the first few months of starting college. They ate whatever was served in the dining hall and laughed and joked at their big table with ten college freshmen. All of the other students were from Pennsylvania - the boy was from far far away.

After dinner came time to get ready for the dance. The girl made arrangements with her guy friend Bill, to allow the boy to sleep on his floor (boys sleeping on girls' floors was, and is, uncouth). The boy and Bill chatted while the got ready. The boy put on his suit and his cologne and even his high school ring. He felt so suave. Until they walked out of Bill's room to go down the hall in McLean Hall to where the girl lived. She opened the door. She looked spectacular.

Before leaving for the dance, the boy and the girl paused to take a picture. Going to a dance, on the night they met. They danced, sort of, to the (very limited) extent the music was suitable for dancing. Halfway through the dance they snuck away from all the girl's paparazzi friends with their flashing cameras to the third floor of the CUB. He sat on the sofa. She lay in his lap. He took off his jacket. She kicked off her shoes. They sat and lay there. And they talked. And then they kissed. And a new romance was begun.

This is the story of two children who fell in love - against long distances and long odds. When they met, he was 19, she was 18. He was a first-year student at Georgetown University in Washington DC, she at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, in the college town by the same name. Neither of them owned a car, or a cell phone. For the first two years, they rode the Greyhound Bus back and forth between Shippensburg and Washington. After that they got cars because the drive was just too long. On April 2 2004, the girl's 22nd birthday, the boy took her to the top step of the Lincoln Memorial and on bended knee asked her to be his for three forevers.

The boy and the girl foolishly thought that the 104 miles separation between Washington and Shippensburg would be the greatest they would endure in their romance. But country came calling, and soon after graduation, the boy found himself on a Navy warship off the coast of Iraq in the earliest days of the insurgency. The boy and the girl were married in 2005, and had their reception on the beach. Two of the friends he met that first weekend, Lynne and Amy, were bridesmaids for the girl in their wedding. The boy would go back to the middle east once more in 2006. Now the boy no longer serves on a ship. He goes to an office and comes home every night. The days of being separated by long distances are behind them.

The boy and the girl have a little girl of their own now, and a house in the suburbs, and a car payment, and a retirement plan. But when the boy started writing this record, he opened that picture of them on their first night in 2001 and was astonished at what children they were then. But we've promised to love each other, for three forevers, and tonight we'll celebrate that night

that two children fell in love.