Loves Surprises

Have you ever had one of those days where something sneaks up on you from out of the blue and gives you a right cross upside the head followed by a left jab between the eyes. That sort of thing has happened to me more times then I care to remember, and usually the underling reason is never anything good.

Well, a couple of nights ago I got blindsided by the Old Salt and it sure felt as if I had been given one of Cassius Clay’s (sorry, he will always be Cassius Clay in my mind) best knockout punches. The slap in the face had me crying like a toddler who dropped their ice cream cone in the sandbox; and, all because he did something very sweet, loving and unexpected for me.

What with moving and all the related work trying to get one house on the market and the other in a fit state for entertaining family for our usual Christmas Eve celebration. The Old Salt and I did not have time for all of the little holiday traditions that I so much enjoy. During a conversation earlier this month, I happen to mention, I never wanted to move again; and certainly not at holiday time, because I felt cheated out of my own sense of enjoyment of the season.

We both enjoy watching movies and have established a routine of using the long cold winter nights (and a steady stream of Netflix movies) to catch up on all those great flicks we missed in the theater over the years. The Old Salt is the one who usually keeps the movies queued for shipment but I will on occasion go toss in a surprise or three on him.

I have gotten to the point where I don’t bother to even ask what the selections are, until the disc is placed in the player, and not always even then. So I am the one getting the surprise most nights.

Now, back to the reason for my post. The other night I settled in for our nightly movie and was surprised when a Christmas comedy came on the screen quickly followed by the dimming of lights and holiday appropriate snacks and lighting.

I turned to the Old Salt and ask what was going on. His reply “just making up for one of those missed holiday traditions this year.” Well, I started to blubber like a baby.

I have spent 40 years of my life married, and until I married the Old Salt I was never treated to such consideration and so many expressions of love.

Isn’t it amazing how once in a while right in the middle of and ordinary life you get blindsided when love gives us a fairytale.

Frank, you are the best, and I love your great surprises. Honey, I love you too.

It’s the little things........

Sorry everyone, I promised this for Monday and I am a day late. Please forgive me.
Regular readers will know that I have written about how the “Old Salt” and I met and about our wedding and other events in our lives in other posts. If you skip back to posts dated between Nov. 2006 and Mid 2007 you will find many of them. But, for my new readers here is the abridged version.

I was widowed in Dec of 2003 and Frank was divorced the same year. We were both seeking someone to spend the rest of our life with and we had profiles on several singles sites. We had each tried and rejected sites like E-harmony as not being for us. We had both met and dated some nice and not so nice people. We had each been rejected by someone else and had our heart broken. Then came Thanksgiving 2006.

At the precise time that I was sharing a traditional thanksgiving with my Mother and twelve siblings and their families, Frank, was all alone traveling from one coast to the other after a disappointing first face-to-face meeting and entertaining himself on his laptop.

As is tradition in my family, when we assembled to say grace before dinner, we went around the table and each family member mentioned what they were thankful for that year and what they wanted the family to pray for in the coming year. I asked the family to pray that I would meet the man I would marry.

Later that night I checked my email to find my first note from Frank. He had stumbled on my profile on Yahoo Personals during his trip. Frank was not interested in meeting anyone at the time but my profile was very different from the norm and very over the top, so he decided to write and comment on how unique it was. As a result, we began to correspond and I eventually gave him my phone number. By mid December I knew I had met someone very special and could not wait to meet him face to face. So I arranged to take my first ever plane trip that weekend. I called Frank and asked if he was going to be busy that Friday. He said no, so I asked him to meet me at the airport. We spent three days together then I returned home to Missouri. Soon we were making plans for me to quit my job and return to California to be married.

We each knew that we had met someone very special. We knew that we had similar upbringing, thinking, interest and goals. We also knew that we would be very close friends. Frank, had come to the conclusion that love was not as important, at our stage of life, as a great companion. My marriage taught me that romantic love did not last and you had to make the daily decision to continue to love your partner for the marriage to last. So, I was experienced with love found and lost and knew I could choose to love Frank, regardless. I did not require Frank to profess his undying love. He was thoughtful, kind relatively undemanding, and we fit together like we had been a couple for years instead of just a few weeks. We were married on our way back to my home in Missouri.

Since then we have been best friends and travel companions and settled into a comfortable and happy life. I can not speak for Frank but I doubt that either of us gave much thought to the missing love ingredient; until, during the past several months, things began to change, and all because of little things. Little things like his hand on my elbow when crossing a street, or a palm against my back when escorting me through doorways, the water reservoir on my C-pap machine being filled each night without my knowledge, not letting me carry laundry baskets on the stairs or unload groceries from the car, silly excuses for phone calls when apart, finding my drink glass refilled, or small treats left on my worktable. So many little things I can’t begin to name them all.

Yes, it is the little things that seem to have changed everything. The little things that neither of us had ever had before. The little things that began to add up and suddenly burst into one very big thing that we had to call LOVE. I have a feeling that each of us had come to the same conclusion at different times but neither wanted to be the first to actually declare our feelings for fear they would not be reciprocated. So, we were getting very chummy and many PDA’s (personal displays of affection) were sneaking into our daily lives. Those little things were multiplying and becoming not so small.

Then came that one perfect day when ………………so sorry, I think I want to keep that our little secret. But, needless to say we both had to admit that we had fallen in love. It was not fireworks and mad passion but more the deep and lasting feeling that only people who have lived full lives and know true value when it appears are capable of.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times;”

The first line of “ A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens states “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times;” and that certainly describes how things have been in the life of the Old Salt and me since my last post. As I write this, I have an egg sized knot on the back of my head, a bruise the size of a saucer on my chest and my calf, from falling off a bicycle several days ago. We are house bound by ice and snow that has covered most of the Midwest. My dear husband is just finishing up a second round of antibiotics and still has all the symptoms that put him on them to begin with. But, since no one wants to read the story of some sad saps on the pity pot I will forgo relating details of everything else that made up the worst of times list and jump directly to the best of times.

Since my last post, we traveled from St. Louis to Omaha to Florida and back again with side trips to many points in-between. We visited family members in four states. We were on hand for the 88th birthday of one Aunt and the 90th birthday of her sister. We enjoyed warm balmy days and the frigid stillness and beauty of new fallen snow. We sloshed through mud puddles and stepped over dirty banks of slushy snow. We ate in five star restaurants, greasy spoons, small town diners and even traveled out of our way to find one very old house that had been converted into a quaint cafe. We ventured off the expressway to discover new adventures on the back roads. We watched pigs race, pumpkins being shot from air cannons, and slung apples from giant slingshots. We toured a stately mansion and the vacation home of a former president. We even changed plans midstream to go chasing after the promise of a great bargain at a local swap meet on the commons of a picturesque southern town advertised by a hand lettered sign on a street corner. We let an old woman’s recollections lead us back in time down memory lane while trying to locate scant evidence of a life she left behind more than fifty years ago. We even managed to celebrate the holidays with as many family members, and as much pomp and fanfare as possible.

But, the number one event in our lives was the fact that we fell in love. Yes, that romance novel, heart pounding, mushy kind of love. Do I hear some of you saying, “Now wait a darn minute, aren’t you newlyweds? Are you telling me you were not in love before?” The answer is yes and yes. So now I guess I need to explain. Regrettably, I will have to make this a cliff-hanger and give you the full scoop in my next post. I have to get my old bones off to bed because I have an early appointment in the morning. If the roads are clean enough for travel we have been invited to spend the weekend with a dear friend. So check back on Monday for the rest of the story.

I became Alice sliding down an endless rabbit hole

I always walked the tried and true paths and carefully considered every act before following through. I have a life-long habit of struggling to be perfect for everyone in my life; even if it meant losing me in the process. No one worked harder to please others and keep a peaceful balance in all things than I did. I was the straight shooter who talked the talk and could be depended upon to walk the walk. I lived my life on sound principles based on the belief in pure right and wrong, fairness, justice, loyalty, sportsmanship, understanding and right reason.

On the few occasions, in my youth, when I dared to test the waters and strayed from the expected; I ended up being smacked upside the head with the futility of my actions, and quickly gave up considering future misdeeds. Nowhere in my upbringing or subsequent half century of living did impulsive acts ever enter into my consciousness.

One day I became Alice sliding down an endless rabbit hole while bits and pieces of the past and present flew past me in a whirlwind of nonsensical scenes: Grandma Nellie cutting gumdrops for Christmas Cakes while spinning yarns to wide-eyed grandchildren, four laughing cousins sharing secrets on Aunt Ceal’s big iron feather bed hours past their bedtime; while distance sounds of auctioneers chanted “I’ve got fifty, fifty anyone want to make it sixty, fifty-five I got fifty-five in the back row, how about sixty” as numbered fans waved the air; antiseptic smells, somber doctors in lab coats, nurses shoes squeaking on polished floors; men with ghostly pallor lying on satin beds with folded hands beside marble angels.

I awoke one morning and found the world had a bright new hue. Everywhere, scenes and situations shouted at me to seize the day or take time to smell the roses. Clocks loudly ticked off precious minutes I could never recover, train whistles yelled of places that needed to be visited, woodsy trails begged to be explored, and cities became a bullying child demanding that I lay my lunch money in their palm.

Each new day found me wishing for the warmth of a hand in mine as I crossed a street, comfortable companionship and idle conversations over leisurely meals, spooning of bodies on soft flannel. The Internet beckoned, with promises of soul mates and endless love, so I joined the masses seeking to be paired with the prince of my dreams. Instead a lengthy procession of toads, weasels, skunks and sneaky foxes floated across my computer screen with one occasionally escaping the phone lines to take the empty chair at my dining table.

After years of repeated excitement, followed by crushed dreams and a once badly cracked but eventually mended heart, my life settled into gradual routines of acceptance with busy projects and service to others. When least expected, an e-mail showed up in my inbox glowing as if illuminated from within by the beacon from a costal lighthouse; the sender might as well have been wearing orange and lime polyester plaid trousers with a power blue shirt and a propeller beanie for the way he stood out from the crowd and captured my attention. From that first brief contact I knew it would take very little panning to find this stream would soon be mining the mother load and I had to be the one to beat everyone else to staking the claim.

A lifetime of sensible and cautious living disappeared among impromptu plains and impulsive decisions. A first ever plane trip halfway across the country and two very impetuous days spent in this man’s company had me returning home to find myself days later making plans for a return trip and a simple wedding a few short weeks in the future.

Every acquaintance, friend and family member is convinced I have lost my wits in an emotional sea of new love and sexual desire. They all want to stop me from making a hasty mistake. Even so, I will, in just four short days, fly back to join my life with the most wonderful, sensitive, caring, supportive, witty, intelligent, and delightfully adorable soul who think’s that we are, as Forrest Gump would say, “just like peas and carrots.”