Dina Campeau has fallen in love more times than she can count in
the past twenty-five years. Luckily for her husband, each time it
has been with him.
Dina Campeau has fallen in love more times than she can count in the past twenty-five years. Luckily for her husband, each time it has been with him.
Campeau met her future husband Ballan at the World Cup in Barcelona, Spain in 1982.
“Down the stairs bounded the man of my dreams – though I didn’t know it until two weeks later – knapsack over his shoulder, cheerfully saying, ‘Who’s ready to go?'” Dina Campeau said.
Later that night, they saw their first game at Nou Camp stadium, newly built to seat a staggering 100,000 spectators.
“When he noticed how my hair kept blowing across my face, he got up and sat on the other side to block the wind,” Dina Campeau said. “That, and the fact that he listened to all my opinions on world and local soccer – and I had many – and politics – even more – with all seriousness, made me know I’d met a friend for life. Later, after the Brazilians and Italians stopped dancing in the streets – about 3:00 a.m. – we walked around Barcelona, talking while the streets were deserted by all but the National Police bearing submachine guns. We watched the sun rise over the Mediterranean.”
They eloped in October of 1983. This past November, to celebrate their 25th anniversary, the Campeaus enjoyed an auction prize – donated by Dale and Ruth Connell – that they won at a St. Joseph’s Family Center fundraiser: a week in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where they took their honeymoon.
“It was a big difference going 25 years later to a place we’d been before,” Dina Campeau said. “A lot has changed there, and a lot has changed for us. The journey for us has been bumpy, but great, and it was wonderful to go again with the same person I loved and knew and trusted even more 25 years later. I think our popular culture tricks us into thinking that we need to be passionately in love all the time. He and I are deeply involved in our work and our families and our community, and the marriage isn’t impervious to the stresses those can bring. So, for me, the question when things would get low was: Would I enjoy him if we weren’t living here in these circumstances – this job, this house, his family, my family, etc. – but alone on a deserted island together? The answer was always yes. Over 25 years, I’ve fallen in love with my husband repeatedly, each time more deeply than the times before.”
When Dina Campeau told me how she found a friend for life in her husband, I could really relate.
I met my husband Steve in a high school philosophy class. He fell for me, but I just thought of him as a friend. Finally, after 11 years of fun activities as “just friends,” I realized that I had a major crush on him, but he had long since given up on me romantically. I wrote him a letter which led to us going out on our very first date. At the end of the night, we didn’t know what to do. Kissing seemed awkward, but we knew our relationship had somehow changed. So we shook hands.
We had our first date, first kiss, he asked me to go steady, and we got engaged all in just 13 days.
Nineteen years later, we are still enjoying each others’ company. We recently celebrated our anniversary with a drive to San Juan Bautista, where we had dinner at a restaurant called The Faultline, which overlooks the San Andreas faultline area. Edie Duncan, the proprietor, runs the cozy restaurant out of her home and makes everything herself. It’s not usually open on Sunday evenings, but when I called to ask, Edie said she’d stay open for our anniversary.
The most amazing thing about the evening was the view from the window where we sat – I began to notice a lightness over one of the hills across from us, and as we watched, we realized it was the glow heralding a moonrise. In a matter of moments, we saw what was just a colorful glow in the distance grow into the bright edge of the moon peeking up over the mountain. It was shot through with the same reds and golds as a sunrise. Everyone ran outside to get a better look. As we all watched together, the moon began ascending so rapidly that we could actually see it moving. In no time, it appeared to be as brilliant and full as any moon we had ever seen and so close we felt as if we could reach out and touch it. Edie told us it was the brightest moonrise predicted for the entire year.
When the bill came, Edie had itemized the charges. Just below “Apricot current cake,” it read, “Moonrise: Free. Happy Anniversary!”
May you and your loved ones have the kind of Valentine’s Day that money can’t buy.
