November 12, 2025: An essay from this time last year

I wrote this for my expository writing class last year, in November, actually, and I just rediscovered it today while looking through my old essays. I realized I never shared it, with anyone outside of the class, so here it is.

Emails with the Subject Lines “How mom and I met” and “Dad & I” 

At twenty years old, here’s what I knew about my parents’ marriage: 

They got married on Cape Cod, and the reception was at the Wequassett Resort. 

They lived in a house in Brewster when my sister was born, in June of 2000. 

They moved to Pennsylvania sometime before I entered their world in 2004. 

They divorced in 2009, when I was five years old. 

I only ever saw them as co-parents and friends. Their marriage, their life together, was like a myth to me, their youngest shared daughter. I had evidence in a wedding photo and the few stories, or even fragments of stories, that I was told. I held onto all of it like artifacts. 

My trips to the Cape have filled in some of the blanks. I’ve heard about my sister’s first birthday party at my parents’ shared house in Brewster, a house that my dad pointed out as I sat in the passenger seat of his truck one summer. My grandfather offhandedly mentioned, as we sat by the water at the Wequassett Resort, that my parents had their wedding reception there. He asked me if I knew that; I didn’t, although I had seen a photo of two of them dancing, my mom in her wedding dress. I spent my childhood visiting that exact resort every summer (we never stayed there — my uncle just knows so many people that he can walk down to the bar and restaurant without raising any eyebrows), but it was not until I was about sixteen that I found out about its place in our history. 

I grew more and more curious over the years. Through high school and the start of college, when my friends would talk about the early days of their own parents’ relationships, I could contribute with the story that my stepmom told me at a family dinner: the first time she saw my dad, behind the bar of the restaurant he still works at, right down the road from the house we now live in. I was happy to have heard that story, of the moment that built one of my two households. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder about what I was too hesitant to ask. 

In late September, all four of us—my sister, both of my parents, and me—were all in Massachusetts together for the first time in my memory. We gathered for my cousin’s wedding in Plymouth. My mom hadn’t seen my dad’s family in years, and she refers to that weekend as one of the highlights of her year. It was one of my highlights, too. I saw the look on her face when she entered the hotel lobby, reuniting with my paternal grandfather and uncles. They exchanged stories, some that I had already heard and some that I hadn’t. It was a glimpse into their lives together, a glimpse that gave me the go-ahead to seek out more. 

Random question / mini project for you both, I was wondering if you could each type out your recollection of how you met & email it to me? 

I sent this text on November 10th, 2024, and I received an email from my dad on November 11th at 3:07pm. Subject line How mom and I met. As eager as I was, I waited until that night to read the email, wanting to dedicate some time to uncovering the reason I exist. There it was, sitting in my inbox. It only took one email, on a random Monday in November, to find out the answers to a question I had spent years wondering about—or so I thought.  

Hi there,

Not sure how much you need but I'll give you as much as I remember. Long time ago:)

We got married on May 22, 1999 so I'm pretty sure we met in the summer of '96, maybe '97!? Mom will remember that better than me. I had been working at Christian's Restaurant and Piano Bar in Chatham for a few years and had just bought my first house at 741 Millstone Rd. in Brewster. Christian's had a nice dining room on the first floor and a quaint little piano bar upstairs. The bar was busy year-round with a fun regular crowd of locals. The year round staff was a great group too. Stay in touch with many of them to this day. When the spring rolled around every year we had to add lots of staff for the summer. The owner Matt Schultz (Christian was the chef and Matt was his brother) did most of the front of house hiring and I remember him telling me he thought he hired someone really good to be a hostess for the downstairs dining room and that she was starting that night. Later on that night I was working the bar upstairs and up came the new hostess with the manager that was training her. That was when we first met:)  I was impressed to say the least. Not only was she very pretty but she was very friendly and outgoing and seemed genuinely excited and happy to be there and have a job in paradise (Chatham) for the summer. I not sure how many shifts we worked together before I asked her out but I don't think it was many!! We then started dating and having a great summer. Great enough that she decided to stick around for at least the fall. Which then turned into her moving in with me on Millstone Road and not leaving the Cape at all.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you need more or anything else.

Love you,

Dad

It was not a surprise that my parents met at a restaurant in Massachusetts. My dad grew up in Medfield, went to UMass, and spent a lot of time working in the restaurant industry in different areas of the state, including on Cape Cod. All of this I knew. But I thought that it was my dad who introduced my mom to Chatham. How did she end up there?

My mom has mentioned that she had a one-way ticket to Los Angeles after graduating from West Virginia University, but something about it just didn’t feel right, so she moved up to Boston instead. This must have been the simplified version of the story — her life following graduation, the life that led her to my older sister and me — but ever since I heard it, I had assumed that my parents met in Boston. I guess it makes more sense this way: my dad isn’t a city person, unless he’s going to a Boston sports game, and the Cape has always been his favorite place. He often talks about his summers on Martha’s Vineyard, his restaurant jobs in Chatham. Aside from their shared house in Brewster, I was never sure where my mom fit into the picture. Her relationship to Cape Cod was not nearly as clear to me. 

I received my mom’s email, the next day, at 1:28 pm. Subject line Dad & I. Not long into my reading, I realized that what I had read the day before, my dad’s recollection, was missing a lot of the story. The location—Chatham, a restaurant called Christian’s that doesn’t exist anymore—that was consistent. The timeline? Not so much. 

Dad & I met in the fall of 1997 in Chatham, Massachusetts. I had just graduated college months before, and moved to MA with a college boyfriend to stay for a few months. (he had family up there on the Cape that we stayed with) I was interviewing for jobs in Boston, and planned to move there - but in the meantime, I got a waitressing job in Chatham short term, while I was looking for a job in my field. The restaurant was called Christian's, and Dad was the Bar manager there. The people who worked there were such a fun group - lots of laughter! My college relationship ended (I think we outgrew it) I moved back home to PA that December. Dad and I were friends first, but we kept in touch for a few months while I was back home, and I decided to go back in early 1998. I rented a place in Chatham with a friend from the restaurant, and Dad and I started dating. I got a job with a broadcasting company soon after, and eventually moved in with Dad in Brewster. Then we got engaged and married on May 22, 1999.

Love you!

Mom

When my mom told me that she sent the email, she joked, I hope the story is the same! I was expecting some details to be off, especially because my dad admitted to his fuzzy memory: 

Mom will remember that better than me. But really, the main consistency in their sides of the story was the location—a restaurant in Chatham. 

Chatham. A town that, unsurprisingly, my dad refers to as paradise. I always just assumed that my mom only moved to the Cape because her and my dad moved there together. I had no idea about this college boyfriend and the connection that led her to my dad.  

My mom spent a night in Chatham this past September, the night before my cousin’s wedding, taking advantage of her now-rare opportunity to return to Massachusetts. In the hotel lobby in Plymouth, when she recapped her visit to the Cape, it was the first time I learned that my mom ever worked in Chatham. And still, I had assumed it was after she met my dad. 

Many of my own summer memories have taken place on the Cape. I spent my childhood summers looking forward to our annual trip, where we’d gather with my extended family in Orleans and walk around the main streets of Chatham. And it turns out that the town of Chatham is more involved in my origins than I ever really knew.

I’ve been drawn to Massachusetts all my life for reasons that I could never really pinpoint. I love Pennsylvania (at least my area of it), but I’m not pulled back to it in the way that I’ve been pulled up north. As it turns out, I love this state in a way that mimics not only my father’s fondness for it, but also my mother’s. It took over fifteen years for both of them to return at the same time, the only time I can remember standing with both of my parents in the place that we all love so much. I drove away from Plymouth that weekend in September, and I cried on my way home to Amherst. Maybe I knew that it was my first step towards unraveling the love story that I only witnessed before I was old enough to remember it.