Guest Post

Yes, its true

I fell in love with a shy seventeen year old girl who, at first, didn't want anything to do with me. She didn't tell you about the part where she had seen me before with my crazy long hair and decided I was absolutely not the kind of people she wanted to hang out with.

At the time I didn't know why I was so interested in the quiet, ethereally pale (like an angel spun from gold) girl I saw at that party. She wasn't my type at all. I was actually seeing someone else when I met her. I liked brunettes (where I grew up, everybody was blonde -- but it wasn't real). I liked older women (I've only ever dated one woman younger than me). I liked wild and crazy (I was a little wild and crazy myself -- but just a little). -- but every day of that year was was like falling down a hill that I didn't want to climb back up. So slight -- I could pick her up like she was a handful of feathers -- I had a dream that I threw her in the air and she flew away like a dandelion seed. She was always looking down -- with her shoulders rolled forward and her arms held close to her body or wrapped across her torso, hugging herself in -- nobody notice me! Her her hair was so long, so platinum bright, so light that it always flickered in the wind like a living thing. Even that first day at the beach, she sat on the sand with her knees pulled up tight to her chest, her chin nestled between her knee caps, eyes drilling into the sand -- so quiet, voice a murmur, body completely still. She never looked up, so I know she had no idea how that hair flew about her head -- a glittering cloud of diamonds, a halo. Every day that year, the little corner of my heart that fell in love with that painfully shy, almost perfectly innocent girl on a winter beach on the first day of the year, every day the little corner grew a bit bigger, wrapped a little tighter, and pushed everything else away.

In the beginning of our relationship there was an awful lot of chasing and retreating. I had to call her -- she didn't call me. -- but pretty soon I was calling her every day and it was the best part of the day. This was back in the dark ages, before the new-fangled "pocket phones" the kids carry these days, so we Navy peoples had to go to the call center, which was a room filled with little glassed in booths with a phone that you could use to call home. You had to use your A.TT card to pay for the call. I don't remember what the minutes cost, but I remember that I had a $300 monthly bill, more than once. I told her I loved her before she told me -- perhaps blurted is the correct word. Compulsive might be an accurate word. If you know us, you know the story of my magnificent wedding proposal. I wanted to get married a long time before she did. She thought she was too young to be married (if my daughter tries the same thing, I would have to agree), but I think it turned out alright. I was always pushing the next phase a little bit before she felt comfortable with it, but that was only because, from about the second week I knew her, I have always been sure -- there has never been a doubt in my mind -- this was the girl, this is the one.

Well, she was 17 on that first night and it's 20 years later, so we have both spent (literally) half of our lives together and I am absolutely sure that it has been the better half -- but it's not even half over yet, and I know it will just keep getting better and better. Now that shy, innocent girl has grown into a strong, confident woman. Someone I trust. Someone I admire. The person whose advice I value more than any other. A hot babe who still makes my heart race.

I can't say it's been the time of my life, because you are my whole life.
Always and forever : )

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