What a Long Strange Trip It's Been...

Today I am married for 27 years to my best friend.

I remember the very first time I saw him. He was on stage at the Brierfield Ironworks Park, with a bit role as a Native American in an outdoor professional drama called "Bright Hope."

That he had on a loincloth, and was possessed of the most amazingly beautiful legs I had ever seen did not escape my notice.

But I was seeing one of the two male leads, a semi-pro actor from Atlanta, a fella named Ed Buckley, and Henry was seeing every available female on campus at the University of Montevallo.

As it happens, the cast decided to go for pizza one night, and I was just completely taken with this local boy mechanic and how he seamlessly fit in with the polished hoity-toity actor types. And his eyes -- I could not take my eyes off his eyes. They were the kindest, gentlest, most beautiful green eyes I'd ever seen.

He kept looking in my direction, too, and I was certain beyond all reason that he felt a pull towards me, too.

Summer ended, and I came back home, and my relationship with Ed fell to bits due to lack of proximity, and when I returned to Montevallo in the fall I was still nursing that broken heart.

But one night, the communal phone on the dorm hall rang, and it was Bill Streib, Yankee actor from Illinois who'd won the heart of my buddy Lou Anne Wright. I answered the phone and went to find her.... I was told that somebody had just seen her sitting outside the cafeteria which was just next door to the dorm, so I went flying down the stairs.

Yep -- there she was, and she was talking to the Mechanic! When I told her Bill was on the phone she fairly flew away, and that left me there in the presence of this man who made my heart skip a beat. We sat on that wall talking until 2:00 in the morning. I was pretty sure I'd never see him again, but boy, hadn't we had a nice time talking.

The next day, Lou Anne told me that BlueJohn (that's what everybody in Shelby County called him) had been asking her if I was back at school. This made me very giddy.

And then he turned up, asking me for a date, and the rest, as they say is history.

Oh, except that I did find out that that night at the pizza parlor he was NOT lookin' at me -- he was looking PAST me to one of the lead actresses whom God had blessed most especially in the chest department. So much for romance.

We've been inseparable ever since.... two children of whom we are inordinately proud, bad days, good days, hard times, gentle times, periods of wondering why we are even together, and then periods when we can't imagine ever being apart..... this is the sum of a life so far that I am blessed to be living.

That I get to do it with a man I am desperately in love with even when I can't stand him one more minute is deep privilege.