Our lives have so many similarities that it is amazing when you think about them. Frank is 11 months older than I but we graduated from high school the same year. We were each previously married for 37 years. His marriage ended in divorce and mine in the death of my husband. We each have one child born 7 months apart. Frank has the same birthday as my daughter. We were each married to a good person whom we became estranged from over the years mostly because of our having been raised in different cultural and religious environments. We are both touchy feely, emotionally expressive, affectionate, people persons who were married to emotionally inhibited, socially reserved, conversationally challenged, distant, often cold spouses.
Frank and I both have an affinity for helping those less fortunate. We both used the term “orphans” to describe the many lost souls we have adopted over the years. Both of us felt our spouses were just caregivers, and we did our best alone to parent our child.
The unusual story of how Frank and I met and married can also be found in these pages. Just go back between Dec. 2006 and March 2007. Next Monday we will be celebrating our first wedding anniversary. Frank likes to quote Forrest Gump and say that we are like “peas and carrots.” I choose the term “two peas in a pod” and even gave him a trinket box with that saying as a wedding gift. Regardless of how you express it we are very much in tune. We can almost read each others minds. We finish each others sentences. Know instinctively when the other needs a hug or compliment. Drinks, snacks, or warm blankets seem to be delivered out of nowhere by the other just at the moment one of us thinks about getting them for ourselves.
We seem to never stop talking or touching. It’s as if we have been an emotional desert in need of rain for years. Whether sharing the newspaper, reading books or favorite websites we are constantly sharing tidbits. We will start a shared task and end up sitting for long periods in deep conversations that will take many turns before one or both of us ends up laughing, crying, hugging or all three at once. Just yesterday we had a long discussion that started with whether or not judges should be able to order public humiliation as punishment for petty crimes. Should judges revert to placing miscreants in stocks in the city square; or in lieu of a city square the center court of the local shopping mall. Could you imagine going shopping and finding all the petty criminals shackled in stocks around the mall with a placard around their neck announcing their crime? Would that or public flogging be a better deterrent to crime than community service and fines? Frank said it is not the severity of the punishment but the certainty of apprehension that is a deterrent to crime. This morning we started out to scrub our sundeck and ended up in a discussion about whether squirrels are just bushy tailed rats, and whether the name was an insult to real rats; and all because the squirrels gnawed a hole in the bird feeder to get at the seed.
Before Frank came into my life I thought that I got enough exercise at work. I had stopped reading the newspaper or watching most television news and programming. My television was glued on HGTV. I like the shows about home decorating. Now I can’t start my day without reading the newspaper over breakfast and dinner is shared with the national news. I also became addicted to American Idol even though music is not my thing. (see Just noise 2-18-08) Now besides having a stepper in my dining room, we take daily walks, plan hiking trips and have a membership to the Y.
We both have hearing losses that complement each other. I can repeat the lines Frank misses on the TV and he can alert me when I do not hear the knock at the door. We both have health problems with good and bad days but so far have avoided both being down on the same day which is good. Frank waits on me more than I do him though, so I have to improve on that score. Also, we have lucked out and had our “senior moments” at different times, so that we can help each other with the forgotten names, appointments and misplaced items. We have different knowledge, skills and talents so between us there is very little that we haven’t been able to accomplish together.
My dear sweet Frank, thank you, for the best year of my adult life; you are so adorable and I love you more with each waking hour.
