50 Years and Still Clueless

The longer I live, the more I experience, the less I know!!  I do not know if this is the same for the rest of the world, but it sure is for me.

I have wanted to be married since I was four years old, REALLY!!  Four is when I first started to notice, flirt with, and follow my sisters friends around.  She was four year's older than me, so I guess at that time I was interested in older "women."  This trend actually lasted until freshman or sophomore year in high school and then began to reverse itself.  When I was a freshman in high school I dated a senior and I now know that I almost gave my father, and her mother, a heart attack.  When I was a senior in high school I dated a Freshman, or two, and then the process started all over in college.

My freshman year at the College of Wooster I used to see the same women every day in the training room before and after pre-season practice.  She always had to have her knee wrapped and so she would be standing up on the training table...wow.  Just thinking about it now it still makes me blush.

In August on most college campuses the only people on campus are coaches and athletes and so for an 18 year old football player it was essentially heaven.  This young lady it turned out was a field hockey player, and an All-American.  She ended up her senior season breaking the TEAM scroing record by herself!!  Later that fall she saw me in the school pub, called The Pub, you can't make that up.  After worshiping her for the entire fall she looked at me as only she could have at that time, she did that index finger come hither thing and I was putty.  She never spoke to me after that night.

Sophomore year it was off to The University of Rhode Island where there were more students on the quad the first day of classes than there was in all of The College of Wooster.  Needless to say I did not do all that well in school that fall either.

The middle of sophomore spring my life changed forever and I do not know if I have ever had any control of it since.  I walked into The Balfour House, the off campus spirit wear and class ring store, and fell in love as soon as I walked through the door.  Now I had been in love before, or at least I told myself, and someone else I was, but this was very, very different.  I am sure that I quite literally stopped in my tracks.  After regaining a small percentage of my faculties I managed to say something, I do not know what, and then eventually someone managed to ask if I could take her out, make her dinner, I am not sure.  She told me she had a boyfriend, and so I tried to politely excuse myself.  The response when I said that I should probably go then was something that I will never forget, "but I enjoy talking to you.  Please come back and visit."

Later that spring my dad was visiting and we wound up walking into the store and I am confident that he had a similar response as I first did.  When we walked out he told me that she was definitely interested in me and that she "was a keeper."  My response, "thanks dad I've got it."

Very long story short, this is the young lady that traveled to Hanover, New Hampshire with me in July for my father's wedding.  I have never been happier than that day, even though just before leaving Rhode Island to drive to New Hampshire we had a long conversation about how incredibly confused she was, and how hard I had made her life.  She had made the decision that when we returned to Rhode Island she would get back together with her high school sweetheart and current boyfriend.  The most difficult and wonderful weekend of my life to that point, and maybe ever.

This is the first time anyone will know that I asked her that weekend, while sitting at a table in The Village Green having some breakfast, or pretending to have some breakfast because I was so nervous and anxious I could not eat, if she could see herself living a life with me in the mountains building houses and making a family.

On the following Monday we said goodbye, and two Mondays after that, and two Mondays after that.  About a year later, maybe more, I got a phone call from her because she was getting married and wanted me to hear it from her.

Her answer in The Village Green that day..."definitely."

It took a very long time after that experience to get back on the proverbial horse, horrible choice of words I realize, but so be it.

The next time lightning struck was the summer before graduate school when someone I worked with was going to visit a friend in one of the dorms at Dartmouth and I was the driver for the day.  Love at first sight yet again.  Two years together on the Dartmouth campus.  One year long distance while I finished up and she began at Illinois Law, and then two years of "commuting" from Toronto to Champaign every weekend, or every other.  Five and a half years of joy and hell, being as sure as a person can be about something and as just as unsure depending on the moment.  Five and a half years of support and caring through undergrad, law school and the bar, and then "what's wrong?" dead silence on the other end.  "You want to try JAG training on your own don't you?"  "How did you know?"  " If that is what you need to do then that is what you need to do.  If I have to wait then that is what I will do."  "Why are you making this so easy for me?" "I love you, what else am I supposed to if this is what you want?"

She recently retired from a decorated JAG career and is now a Partner in a very highly regarded law firm.  Talk about following a plan from beginning to end.

I can still hear my sisters voice in my head at times "you are going to make someone a great husband some day."  I have also heard forever "do you have kids." "No, not yet." " You are going to make a wonderful father."

I love kids.  What I believe about relationships and women all comes from my mother and my father's mother.  I believe they taught me well, but in the end after 50 years I cannot tell you anything about why, or why not.

It is what it is, and there is not much else to say.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.