How it began…
I loved him before I had even met him. While that may sound weird, if you knew of Kent Herbert back in the mid 80’s, you liked him. If you were a girl in the mid 80’s you adored him. The first thing I said to him was on a postcard to my brother while he was away at Woodleaf Camp…an innocent “Tell Kent Hi!” … but his reaction to this was “Who is this girl I’ve never met that is telling me hi?”… I was just Matt’s little sister, and little I was…I was 13, he was 17. I was a soon to be Freshman and he was a soon to be Senior. We met that summer for the first time, the summer of 1984. The first time Matt brought him over to our house on Lily Ave. I had just disastrously cut my bangs…like to the middle of my forehead bad. I was mortified that Matt was bringing Kent over to the house. So there I sat on the hearth with my hand covering my forehead the entire time he was on the couch. I’m sure he thought I was a freak, and there I was head over heels hopelessly in love with a boy I didn’t even know.
While Matt and Kent became best of friends that year, I became the little sister. That was fine. Kent never knew that I was deeply head over heels in love with him. Pretty much every girl in the school was. I watched from afar as our entire Freshman class crushed on him too. At every dance we had that year I managed to pull Kent away when the DJ played Purple Rain. Kent never noticed this. Why? Purple Rain is a whopping 9 minutes long. NINE MINUTES OF SLOW DANCING…then back to reality of just friends, but for those nine minutes I could dream about what it would be like to be the one that he would hold in his arms all the time. Kent vacationed with us routinely at our house in Sunriver, he was truly another member of our family. I loved having him around. He was kind. When I was sick one trip, he looked in on me. I just always felt this special connection, I just never knew if he felt it too.
My yearbook inscription for that year from Kent says “thanks for being such a great little sis, Love Ya” with a cute little heart and has his address at Stanford. We stayed great pen pals and friends for the next few years. I still have all these letters. We saw each other when he came home. I sent him home baked cookies in a Folger’s coffee can while he was away. I dated other people, so did he. You know what my Mom said about each boy I dated? “Why can’t you date a nice boy like that Kent Herbert?”
Spring break of my junior year I was visiting my Dad in Sacramento with my best friend Beth. Kent stopped by on his way home to Eugene. We were at the Mall and I came down an escalator and there he was! (In Kent’s telling of this story he says when he saw me on the escalator he knew he loved me.) We visited for a bit and then he was on his way home. All I knew is that we were great friends. At that point any hope I had that we would ever be anything more was long gone. Kent would always be my big brother’s best friend. He would be my big brother too. He would always be in my life, but never in any other way then a friend. I grew okay with that, it was too hard not to be.
When my brother Matt graduated high school and left for University of California-Irvine he never looked back. That first summer after his first year away he didn’t come home. Around June 10th Kent called our house and asked for Matt. I let him know that Matt wasn’t coming home that summer. He was surprised, maybe a bit sad. They were the best of friends. He was going to miss his basketball buddy. Then he said, “Do you want to go play basketball with me?”
That evening we played basketball for over an hour. Our friendly game was VERY friendly. It was almost tackle basketball. I wasn’t sure what was going on. Kent was flirting, I was sure of it. He kept grabbing me when he didn’t need to, touching me when he didn’t have to…holding on a little longer than he needed…when he was guarding me from behind he would start tickling me…in my head I wanted it to be true, but how could it. He would always see me as Matt’s little sister.
The next night, he called to see if I wanted to play basketball again. Then again. Then again. On June 19th he asked me to go see a movie, Revenge of the Nerds at the movie theater in Springfield. Again, I was fairly sure that I was just the substitute Findley, the stand in for Matt. We got there, sat down and about half way through the movie, he grabbed my hand. I blacked out after that. All I knew was that Kent Herbert was holding my hand. I knew nothing else. I don’t know what the movie was about. I don’t know what the weather was like. I don’t know what I was wearing. I know on June 19th Kent held my hand and my life changed. I thought for a moment that maybe it was an accident. (Kent laughs at me now and says “How does one accidentally hold someone's hand?") On the car ride home, he held my hand again. And the only thought in my head was “Kent Herbert is holding my hand.” … I can’t tell you if he kissed me goodnight because all I remember about June 19th is that he held my hand.
From that night on I knew I would marry him. He didn’t know it for a few years. He had big goals and wanted to make his mark on the community. We dated long distance for several years, we wrote letters constantly (I have them all still in a scrapbook Kent gave me years ago) and we talked on Sunday nights when long distance was 10 cents a minute. I would fly down to Stanford to visit him when I could and hang with him and his roommates who welcomed me with open arms.
Kent walked with me through some of the darkest days of my life before we were married. I knew that he would stick with me during anything after we were married. A boy that will do that is a boy you want by your side.
He would go on to graduate from Stanford, get his Masters from Lewis and Clark in Teaching and teach for a few years in Canby, OR. Go to medical school in New Mexico, Residency in Olympia, WA, serve in the Air Force in Little Rock, AR and land here in Colorado Springs.
My kids have always said that we’ve set the bar really high on what they should look for in a marriage, I hope so. Don’t settle. It isn’t a fairy tale. We’ve put in the hard work. We will be honest and tell you that The Five Love Languages truly is what makes our marriage work. My love language is Acts of Service and Kent’s is Quality Time. We meet each others needs. Daily.
Our marriage has brought us 3 amazing children, we’ve also suffered 5 lost pregnancies. He’s been with me through sickness and health, through fat and thin, through rich and poor through busy and frantic, through my depression and my lowest of days. He is my rock. He is my strength. He is my partner. My soul mate and my very best friend. Thirty years. I’m the luckiest girl in the world. He is the Todd to my Margo. I love him and I like him and I can’t wait for 30 more.
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