On Saturday, July 20th, 2013, I went on my first date with Bunny. It was the end of Week 3 (of 5) at TFA’s NYC Institute, and as staff members, we were both at our wit’s end about how much work we had to do. Yet, for reasons that escape me now, we decided it would be a good idea to drive up to Milford together. So we did. When we got there, we bought a couple of Carvel chocolate-dipped chocolate ice cream cones and took them to the beach, where we sat on a blanket and talked for over an hour. It was a comfortable conversation, filled with laughter and teasing and educational anecdotes, and I secretly regretted having lacked the courage to speak to her earlier in the summer.
For the next two weeks, we spent every moment of our limited free time with each other. We stole glances and kisses between meetings, ate dinners together in Montgoris Dining Hall, and made our way to each other’s suites every evening after the day’s work was done (typically around 10 pm). I learned that she wants to become the principal of an urban school and is obsessed with the color pink; she learned that I can speak five languages and enjoy memorizing poetry. One evening, when she was feeling sick and I wanted to make her feel better, I drew her a “data tracker” that demonstrated her proficiency at being awesome and listening to great music, as well as her lack of proficiency at keeping herself healthy or spending time with me. (I was only half-joking.) Another evening, I played her a song I arranged on guitar called “Hey Bunny” that she insisted on recording because she loved it so much.
The more I got to know Bunny, the harder I fell for her, which scared me — I was Philadelphia-bound at the end of the summer, while she was heading back to Milford, and my past experience with long-distance relationships had left me exhausted and burned. We even had a DTR at one point that ended with her crying and me going back to my room alone. Bunny wrote me a card during our last weekend together that expressed how happy she felt about having met me, whether we stayed together two weeks or two months, but it conspicuously omitted the possibility that we’d last longer. When I departed from Milford train station that Sunday, I did so with a heavy heart.
Fortunately — obviously — this story ends well. Bunny came to visit me in Philly a week after Institute ended, and we agreed it was worth trying to keep our relationship going, despite living 200 miles apart. We fell into the typical rhythm of a long-distance relationship: phone calls before bed (which evolved into Skype calls before bed, which evolved into Skype calls overnight); visiting each other during long weekends (which evolved into visiting each other almost every weekend); and finding things to do that helped us feel closer, like watching Game of Thrones at the same time, texting each other stories using only iOS icons, and challenging each other on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? The following spring, we decided another year of long-distance would be unbearable, so each of us set out to find a job in the other’s city; I landed a role with the Yale Admissions Office, and I suppose the rest is history.
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I’m madly in love with Bunny, but sometimes I struggle to express exactly why in the cheesy letters and notes that I write to her from time to time. How much is too much (in one sitting, anyway)? What if I think of something I want to say after I’m done writing? How can I artfully blend the silly and the serious? In light of this struggle, as well as in celebration of an incredible year together, I’ve created this website to compile at least 365 reasons (one per day, possibly more) why I love Bunny, and to save them to a place that she can visit whenever she wants. Three hundred and sixty five days of Panda-Bunny love begin… today.
