Sometimes, Dreams Really Do Come True!!

It's been a while since I posted a blog. Sorry for that, if anyone is actually reading or checking on it! I think you'll understand when I explain what has been going on in my life the last few months.... and years, actually.

Let me go back first, to 1967. I had just graduated from high school in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and my parents moved to Bessemer, Alabama, immediately after school was out. I was already set to start at Alabama College in Montevallo that fall, but the summer stretched out before me. And then I noticed that there was a young man who lived across the street from us! I would have given anything for him to ask me out that summer!

As it happened, that young man DID ask me out, and our first date was on July 12th of that year. It wasn't long before we were deeply in love. We became engaged in February of 1969 and planned to get married that December. In the meantime, my parents had moved back to Ohio and I went home the summer of 1969 to get a job and save some money for our wedding.

It might seem impossible now, but those were the days before computers and e-mail, before cell phones, before any kind of communication other than letters that took 3 days to arrive. It wasn't long before parental pressure and long-distance pressure did severe damage to our relationship. There are things we should have done back then, but we were young, immature and foolish. No sense in going back there now, but the damage was done and my heart was broken. I thought he had stopped loving me; he thought I had stopped loving him. Little did we know that we could never forget each other.

We went on with our lives, each of us marrying others over the years, but neither of us finding that happiness that had been so close at one time. I never forgot him; I never truly got over him and wondered what would have happened had we gotten married back in 1969.

Six years ago, we did communicate some, so I knew where he was living, and this May I decided to send him an e-mail to wish him a happy birthday. I agonized over it for several days and almost didn't send it. Why? I think I didn't want to bother him if he was happy in his life and didn't want him to think that I was a complete idiot that could never get over him! But he e-mailed me back, I e-mailed him again..... and within 8 days we both knew for sure that the old feelings were still there and still as strong as ever! In August, I quit my job, packed up my belongings and left Ohio for Alabama and the life I had always dreamed of with the one man I have loved for all these years!

On October 20th, we got married on the top deck of the Southern Belle Riverboat in Chattanooga. It may have taken 39 years and 3 months, but dreams really do come true!!