GTKY - DH & Me

simsk3887 · November 2014

I’m Kirsten; 27 years old from a wide-open country area southwest of Pittsburgh, PA. I grew up in a large home my dad built out in the country. We didn’t have much land, but the back of our property adjoined a farm so we still got to hang out with the cows and horses on a daily basis. DH is Carlos; also 27 years old (our birthdays are 3 days apart – he’s an old man if you ask me ) and originally from Portugal. He moved to the states in 2000 and from that point forward lived in a tiny little apartment with his parents and older brother in Newark, NJ. He lived in the part of Newark where you don’t have to speak English for anything except public school; the doctors speak Portuguese, the grocery stores have Portuguese labels and prices, the mechanic speaks Portuguese, etc. His parents have spoken maybe 100 English words to me total in our 7 years together.

I come from a fairly large family (at least in our area, we were considered large) which includes my older brother, whom is now married and has twin boys who turn 5 next month, my older sister, whom is also now married and has two fur babies, and my younger brother – so four of us in total. Typical rural American family of a working dad and SAH mom who did everything from helping out at cheerleading and softball to making our prom and homecoming dresses. My extended family is a little larger as well with four aunts/uncles whom have at least two kids each, who now have at least two kids each.

DH comes from a small family of only him and his brother. When his family came here from Portugal, they had nothing and he has often told me that growing up, they didn’t have shoes or food. It’s definitely eye-opening for me and has made me appreciate what we have even more.

I started college at a small school in Ohio, The College of Wooster. I completed two years there and for a multitude of reasons transferred out to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, two days before classes started of what should have been my junior year. Because my major change was so significant, a liberal arts Biochemistry degree to a health science school Athletic Training degree, I ended up losing a year and therefore started at Duquesne in what I call my ‘second-sophomore’ year. In my junior year, we began our clinical rotations at any and all sports levels, teams, clinics, etc. I was assigned to Robert Morris University football and started my rotation in the middle of the summer prior to my junior year.

DH somehow stayed out of the gangs of Newark, though not for not experiencing it first-hand, and made a name for himself playing football. He had never touched a football prior to coming to the states and therefore didn’t actually start playing until he was later into middle school but at 6’6” and well over 250lbs, he was a natural. He was recruited to play at multiple schools up and down the east coast but decided to take the full scholarship (thank you no student loans!) at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh. He was a freshman when I was a junior (due to his language issues when he first came to the states).

Here’s our not so meet-cute – DH has disgusting feet…I’m not sure how else to put it. He purposely bought his football cleats a size smaller so that he could ‘feel the turf’ and therefore had the worst blisters, calluses, etc. that I have ever seen. This caused him to be in the Athletic Training room daily to get treatment. He also decided about half way through the season to try to break his ankle (I tease him that it was just to see me more often) that required twice daily treatments. Whenever this happened, I realized that he had no one come to see him at games, or support him through his football career. He was still pretty shy because of the language barrier (he never received any true English classes and would pay people to write his reports while he spoke the report to them, fixing any grammar mistakes that he spoke) so I realized during his treatment time that he needed some extra support. *No dirty minds here, I could have gotten pulled from my rotation and failed my clinical if my teachers found out that I was interacting inappropriately.*

We started talking more about his life away from Pittsburgh and what his goals were in football and in life. I made him the subject of my Sports Psychology paper that year, focusing not only on rehabbing through an injury, but also the language barrier he faced on a daily basis. After the season completed and I was no longer at risk of failing my clinical, we exchanged numbers. I attended an after-season party with him and sure enough we started dating a few weeks later, just prior to Christmas. He of course went home for Christmas break while I stayed in Pittsburgh but when he returned he said he had bought me a gift. He made me close my eyes and prefaced it with, ‘This doesn’t mean anything but I thought you’d like it,’ and gave me a ring box. It was a gorgeous ‘this doesn’t mean anything ring’, especially for someone I’d only been dating for a few weeks.

He replaced that ring with the more meaningful one about four years later at his senior recognition game. RMU had to win the game to win their division championship and advance to national travel games, and sure enough they won. Carlos let the team in on his plan at the final huddle and following the final play, he climbed a small retaining wall in front of the stands, pulled me over the railing and asked me to marry him in front of thousands of fans and all of his teammates. I don’t remember much about that day except shivering from being freezing and so excited. I seriously cannot tell you much about what he said because I was so in the moment that I couldn’t hear or say anything. I just cried and nodded.

**The earlier pictures of us crack me up now. DH had a blow out and would take longer than me to do his hair.

One of our first pictures together is the one of us in suits.

Our favorite vacation photo together from Seaside Heights.

And that time he proposed....