Eat. Pray. Love.

January, 2013,

I was in jail. Just had finished reading the Harbinger. Did something I hadn’t in a very long time, and I prayed. I prayed to God to the universe to anyone in any realm of beings that my life would change and I would finally just be free. I didn’t mean from jail, I meant form my life. From the mistakes I had made. I prayed for a guide to my path, where do I go, what do you want me to do. Where do I go. I know the plan you have for me is bigger than me and I’ve been running around in circles from it and please just lead me there.

I served, 42 more days in jail after that and this due to being denied school released not because of who I am necessarily or crimes I had personally committed, but because the judge didn’t like my mother, (let me clarify I served jail time for a crime I did both commit and admit to and violating my probation but I was not granted school release -that I was promised in my probation sentencing- because of someones opinion being negative about someone else and making an example by stealing a little girl’s senior year and so much more. Thus forfeiting my partial scholarship to Columbia, my 2 year Business Professionals of America title and career as president - championships and awards etc as a whole that I was involved in my Business class. My business certificate as I couldn’t graduate and has to reattend (never did). I lost. A lot. Everything I had worked so hard for in my academic career. Everything I built for myself. I had multiple people in both my family and the school system and careers center and even I wrote the judge letters in my behalf of my education and everything in had earned and worked so hard for snd was, still in denied with no reason or explanation.

As a teenage girl.. My life is over right. I’m going to have to graduate a year later after my class, I have nothing to show for as just turned 18 (in jail) year old girl. So I get on my effing knees in a jail cell by my bunk (which mind you was under my good friend and the literal twin of my future husbands best friend at the time. Crazy huh.) and I pray to god. Please fix this. Please help to me fix this. Please give me a light in all of this darkness. Please help me to me to be a light because mine is fading.

Memorial Day Weekend, 2013

I run into Steven my long time crush…Steven Noud Jr (the goofy jock boy I had crushed on since I was 13) (we were always good friends, but he was a couple year old always had a pretty girl at his side and I never even as much tried my chance I just sat quietly observing since the day I met him while he was DJing at KARMA! I know right what a thro back 😅

We ran into other that weekend at a friends cookout/ bon fire. I was drunk because we all no sober Kae would never do this, he had just gotten home from deployment and I knew that and I ran and jumped into his arm and asked him 27 questions about his adventure and all the things and I haven’t left his arms since, nor have I stopped talking his ear off or asking him 101 questions ever since 😂

We started texting that day, and purposely showed up to the same parties and events

June 19th 2013,

he asked me to spend the night at his mommas house I thought my god I cannot meet this Russian woman the notorious noud momma, wtf do I say? Wtf do I wear? And the. I thought why tf do I even care? I just be me and I just go she’s just another friends momma I’m fine right.

But I was so nervous! Never have I ever been nervous to meet a momma! Because well naturally everyone just loves me right 😅😝

Nope I was scared to death.

Because I was about to meet my mother in law!

The Grammy to my one day babies!

Crazy how life works!

We went there for dinner which smelled amazing and I immediately into the door hearing that every single thing was homemade down to the sauce noted that damn, this woman is a cooker. I can’t cook, oh shit. I’m fucked.

I come in and their alll SOOOOO LOUD like holy shit, it was like hockey game loud and everyone was drunkenly trying yell over everyone and his sister was there and she already has me on ice to see if I survive I just met ther her days ago! Lordddd help me. Three little girl we’re running around throwing a beach ball and I know their his pride and joy he loves his nieces. There’s so much food, probably enough to feed the county. The house is beautiful, huge and homey, and he takes me threw his childhood in it. His mom wraps me into a hug and says omg this is the girl you told me all about -Steven blushes beat red- she looks at me and and hugs me again and says my god Steven she is just beautiful! Mind you I showed with a mess head of curls, flip flops, and tshirt) I’m like omg 😳 I look like train wreck she’s lying! They asked me about me and my interests (at the time I had hoped to gain my scholarship back that I had lost the year prior and attend Columbia College Chicago, and get my archeochemist degree, where I would travel the world testing old pieces of art for authenticity CRAZY!)

My brain went from scared, and nervous, to feeling home. To seeing a whole ass family and that no matter what ever they have went threw they were all at the end of the day around that table and totally love each other. They welcomed me because I was important to him, I was his and maybe just for a moment but it didn’t matter to them it felt like I had been sitting at that table for ten years…

But it wasn’t just a moment.

June 20th 2013

he asked me out on my first real date. Not highschool silly take you to the movies go to dinner or prom date…

Little did I know know he was testing the water to see how his family liked me and vise versa because he was planning to ask me the next morning to be his girlfriend, and to go on a real date. We’re laying in bed and this was our conversation..

(I’m wrapped in his arms and his ten thousand pillows in the absolute mess like nuclear mess he left in his apartment nice his parents before he left for the marines 😂 my ocd gave in real quick and trust me the next week that Place was flipped upside down and his sister I were painting it TWICE 😅😝) but here’s what led to really being the Nouds table, for ten years…

S “So that was fun did we scare you away?”

K “No if anything I want to stay here for forever they’re great I think I’ve laughed more than I have in years last night”

S “you could”

K “could what”

S “stay, for forever”

K “it’s weird because it kinda feels like I have been here, forever” I curled my head into his chest and he put his chin on it and wrapped me in his arms and I said “i could just stay right here”

S “well it’s settled then I’m gonna hold you forever and your going to go with me to Detroit tomorrow”

K - i pull away and I laughed and said “what for”

S - “a real date and you’ll need a dress not a tshirt for this one”

K - “I’ve never really been on a real date”

S - “ so first we’re going to - wait a minute what!?”

He rolls outta bed, lights a cigarette, and says one sec.

I’m thinking what in the hell okay. He leaves and I am then totally confused. He comes back about fifteen minute later with a two gas station red roses. (He has ripped off the paper and was cutting the thorns off with his marines pocket knife before he handed them to me, I was like uhmmm? Okay in my face probably 😆

He knelt down by the bed and said Kaelin Parker Joy will you attend the 2013 Detroit MI Marine Corps Reunion Banquet with me. I said yes and kissed him and was like you had to get me flowers he said well I have to make sure I do this right.. and I had to ask you properly of course. -With a smirk on his face.

On June 21st, 2013…

We woke up the next morning and I couldn't find my mascara and eyeliner and I start swearing 🤬 like a feral mean pirate and I am just so angry because I can't go to this important marine thingy without pretty eyes like we have to go right now and anybody that knows me knows I don't early in the morning well 😅😬 🤭

And his mom is just drinking her coffee wondering good lord who is this crazy woman 🫣🤔

She comes around the corner and with all intents and purposes opens her drawer of all her many tester from work and hand me designer eyeliner a mascara and eyelashes curler all new and says here you borrow these baby just bring them back. I'm like wholly crap this woman is probably my god send savior plus mom I never knew I needed just calmly casually while I'm frantically swearing around a storm hands me designer make up and asks me if coffee would help and I'm like wow she sounds just like my mom 🥹

So we go to Detroit, which I've only ever flown out of never really gone to, and it's where Steven was born, and has gone often after moving to our home towns of Coldwater / Quincy MI. We go to this beautiful banquet where he marches with his fellow marines that were asked to stand for this event, it's a wonderful ceremonial celebration and I realize then and remember thinking, amongst all the chaos and all the clapping and all the laughter and excitement and staring at him from across the event center, that this was it. This was my life now, that was him, I don't know how or why or when it even happened but this was my forever. Holy shit, this was god giving my fucking path. What. (now mind you I am currently at this time 18) I reach to the waiter coming up behind with champagne turn behind me grab two of them and sit down and slam them both. 🤪

I took two pictures that day. Unlike me to do. Normally take 1000 😂

We left the banquet and I'm holding his arm we're on the highway he's still in uniform......

We come to a stop and see a car only it's only half a car the front end is entirely smashed into itself.. there's another car that it must've sent flying and bodies and there is blood every where and glass everywhere and car parts everywhere and a woman on the middle wall edge and there's a nurse in scrubs standing in it all Steven screaming help help! And I'm scrambling to look at all of this all at once and no one is here to help we see that and He as a current first responder of the US Military goes to help and he says you stay in this car do you understand me? I said yes. About 4.2 minutes later my dumbass of course left the car 🙄

Now.

At this point in my life, I hadn't really been up and close and personal with death -yet-

My brain calculated immediately that The man on my right that was very clearly ejected from the car the smushed car hit on the left that spun out and hit the wall too was in fact dead. The woman from the smushed car also went thru the windsheild and she was the one on the ledge and she had a huge piece of glass sticking out of the middle of her face and she was screaming because the man next to the smushed car was her husband laying on the ground unresponsive and the nurse and Stevens ms how others coming were trying to help and I just stood there silent.

No movie scene, or show or anything can ever prepare to be in that type of crash scene. It was like time froze. Stevens trying to calm down the woman with glass in her face so she won't run to her husband who the nurse is doing cpr on and their sirens now and they can't ge thru the traffic and there's so much blood, so much glass the roads is just sparkling. And Steven walks up and and hugs me tightly and says baby girl I told you to stay you stay in the car I said I don't listen very well. He grabs my face that is staring at the dead man and kisses me fiercely and says about that first date, I'm gonna have to go save some lives first but then I promise I'm gonna take you dinner in the city, my lady and he salutes to me a runs back over to the crash scene I wave over the paramedics and tell them what we pulled up to and get in the car and watch him as he help them get people in the ambulance and talk with the officers about the scene. I pray.

I pray that they're okay for their families and I pray for Steven as I watch him fall right back into overseas mode right here in his birth city.

He gets back in the car and hands me his cover (hat) and says, yes, he's dead. No I don't know why we just had to go through all that and I'm sorry Kae, this has ruined everything I had planned. As we drove away from the highway scene I looked back at the wreckers towing the cars and I said, it didn't ruin anything, it's one hell of a first date, but it was probably the most thrilling thing I've ever experienced. I realized then that sounded probably insanely morbid and it really shine have left my no filter mouth and he just looked at me and said we'll it's not over yet.

he drove passed the neighborhood he was born and his mother grew up during the Detroit riots, where his parents met.. We walked down town and saw the culture in the Detroit, listen to street music and saw the city, we went to this hole in the wall BBQ pit bar in downtown Detroit. They had the biggest best bbq chicken wings ever known to man and we sat there and played a game we would end up playing for year and still do sometimes, where we narrate other people at tables and pretend what they were talking about. We talked about everything and nothing and at one point he Lena across the table and kissed me and I LOVE Y- ED UHM THIS WHOLE DAY SO MUCH, it was crazy and out of control and full of so much good food and love and just, thank you. He smirked at me from across the table. I blushed because I knew I was caught and said what?!

He said did you almost say you loved me? I said maybe just word vomit I just maybe uhm 😐 he grabbed both of my hands and said "because well, I love you, more Kaelin Swain" and I replied "I love you most!" Weve said this ever since. We drive home listening to his skillet cd and I fell asleep on his arm and when I woke up he said so would you like to be mine? I had planned ask that on much different circumstances we seem to be working backwards here I laughed and kissed a billion times saying yes in between them all.

I later told my mom that next week on her porch swing... " I dunno you know how you said when you know you just know? Mom... I'm gonna marry him one day." She said "that's a kinda love with fighting for, make sure you do"

And boy have we had to fight for it, the world and each other. But a couple years ago, we both realized that no matter how hard things get, we're on this ride together, ride or die.

12year ago I cleaned up his hand in my bathroom of my ex boyfriend Xacs and my bath room. He has had split it open hitting a guy for drunkenly hitting my friend Carlee. I clean up his hand and it was then I think we knew but we had other lives and knew that, and respected it. I didn't see him again, until I obnoxiously and completely out of character jumped into his arms ten years ago. Ten years go I never would have thought I would marry and have four children with the cute shaggy haired boy playing all the jams at our childhood club hangout. The athlete, the one who left our party days and joined the United States Marines Corps. Ten years later and still I sit at the loud outspoken Noud table with all the chaos it brings to it.

The bbq pit is still there, we've since gone there one time again. We never knew what became of the people from the crash. My mom took me in august of 2013, to buy my dress for the 2013 US Marine Corps Ball (October of that year) she died 2 weeks later from suicide. I wore the rainbow paint smeared to floor beautiful gown she bought for me, to give her Eulogy at her funeral September 18th 2013. (Two years later on this date the ex boyfriend I lived with when I cleaned Stevens hand killed himself -we were in god tends and friends-) (our second son would later be born on Xacs birthday) crazy. Anyway, We later that year attended the 2013 Marine Corps Ball where I wore a dress like bells from beauty and the beast, my mothers favorite movie. My husband served two more years on the Reserves, he stood for independence family day celebration the following year. He is now retired and we have never attended another military event.

This year we followed what we thought was our dream to move to the coast, and we now have realized our dream is to be where it am began and are making arrangements to move home to Michigan this fall.

Ten years. Four babies. Aurora (7 almost 8) Kirk (6), Kaizen (4 almost 5), and Arwyn (18months). 1 cat (Olaf, 4) and 1 German Shepard (Arlo, 8 months old)

What's even crazier is that on the same date as our first date, on June 21st 2023, exactly ten year later Our daughter Aurora will compete at the National Gymnastics Association 2023 National Championship in downtown New Orleans at the New Orleans Convention Center.

So we'll go out for a ten year anniversary date on a "real date in the city" in the French Quarter, NOLA.

Holy crap.

Talk about Full circle.

If only we knew, what the first date started. A love story, a family, a legacy.

All from "a real date in the city"

Eat. Pray. Love

Taken the day he asked me on our date

The moment I realized