There's This Girl I Want My Husband to Meet

Now, settle down. I'm not talking any Alaskan version of "Wife Swap."

That’s just a cute way of saying that I sometimes I think about the other “versions” of me my husband will never know.

He’ll never meet the high school version of me and maybe that’s a good thing. While I might have been a lot of fun, I wasn’t always the nicest human being when it came to the opposite sex, so there’s always that.

The girl I wish I could introduce my husband to would be cowgirl I once was.

Now, I’m not saying I was a barrel-racing diva with real ranch cred or anything and the truth is that even in my Texas A&M hey day, getting on a horse was always a bit nerve wracking.

But something about the me from back then would have charmed the pants off him. (Not that I have problems charming my husband’s pants off or anything…have you seen the size of our family? HA!!!)

Cowgirl Megan wasn’t overly confident all the time, but she wore ropers and Levis on a Friday night out. She refused to wear those godawful pocket-less freakshows called “Rockies.” (The 90’s hick version of “mom jeans,” methinks!)

She drank beer. Probably too much beer, but any college girl who knows the difference between Shiner Bock and Milwaukee’s Best has some moxie. Cowgirl Megan two-stepped every weekend and loved country music. She knew the words to every Robert Earl Keen song and even got emotional, sloppy drunk when that sappy Gary Stewart song “An Empty Glass” came on. (That was actually pretty funny.)

She sat through sunsets and swam in creeks. She sat on tailgates and swung her legs back and forth for hours on end, just because. She left front doors open because there was this thing called a screen door. And they rocked...

She loved Steve Earl’s “Guitar Town” and drank her way through an entire pitcher of beer to retrieve her Aggie class ring once. (She lost that ring sometime in 2002 and hasn’t been the same since. So sad.)

(At the that point in time, my husband was enlisted in the Marine Corp. *drool* I think Cowgirl Megan and her counterpart, Marine Corps Patrick, would have been quite a team back in the day. Wild, reckless, constantly hungover. Fun, right?!)

Ok, so maybe once in a while Cowgirl Megan was a moron and did things like drink too much before the party started so she was unconscious and passed out in the back seat of her friend’s car for entire festivities, but still.

We’ll even overlook her penchant for fighting with sorority girls outside the Dixie Chicken that one especially hot summer and chalk it up to the madness that 87 straight days of 100+ degree weather will incite.

But there are days that I miss that girl. What’s more, I wish my husband got to know her before she turned into the bill payer, the floor scrubber, the uber mom. Not that I’m complaining…my life is a beautiful, beautiful thing…but Cowgirl Megan was a freer Megan and sometimes the chains of responsibility weigh heavy and the phsyical distance Alaska imposes between you and everything you grew up knowing is great. Sometimes you miss the Salt Lick and JJ's Pit BBQ just won't cut it.

Maybe more than him knowing that girl, maybe I want him to know the place and the experiences that shaped that girl. They were magical. They are magical.

I miss the things Texas represents from time to time… “ya’ll,” barbecue, bluebonnets, high school football, lazy rivers you can actually jump in without stopping your heart (though the occasional water moccasin might do that for you…just sayin’.) I miss them in a way that I wish my husband (and my kids) could experience it too.

I think about my roots on days like this…sub-zero, lacking sunshine, no fresh fruit to speak of, kids cramped inside a small living room because nobody’s interested in outdoor activities when your boogers freeze immediately on contact with the air.

And I wonder just how rewarding and different it might be to raise our family in a place like that.

Picture it: Cowboy Boy Wonder, Cowpoke Boo, Cowprincess Kenna, Cattle Baron Patrick…and Cowgirl Megan. Pick up trucks, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. Barbeque pits, sunny evenings on a porch swing, and country music.

Sometimes I think I’ll never live that life again…but you know what they say about saying “never,” don’t you?