Here is the colored version of the inks I posted earlier. I started this piece with just two youths on the ground looking up at the sky. I was going to have shapes in the clouds, somehow representing that feeling of young puppy love. That to me was a little corny, so I put the drawing away and figured I might come back to it later. That was a few months ago.

Today I came across the drawing again when cleaning my desk, and I thought of the idea of two entwined trees. With that, the piece began to take on a more personal meaning that relates to my wife and I. We started dating when we were 14. Crazy right? It was July of 98. After my friend asked her out for me (I was too afraid to call her myself), we snuck out that night with some friends and met on the stairs of an old abandoned school. Not a great idea for several reasons, not least the fact that Kate and her friend got the shakedown by some females of ill repute on the way to meet us.

I still vividly remember how I felt in those days. The couple in the picture isn’t holding hands or touching the other. On our first real date, she came over my house to watch something, and I remember my sister or somebody laughing at me because I sat on the exact opposite side of the couch as her.

It’s funny to think that we have been together this long, with only a short break from dating when I was in college. We have been married for 8 years, and things are much different than two people at opposite ends of the couch with pits in our stomach. Two entangled trees. I can say that I’m more than happy that my tree is all tangled up with her tree.