My Two Loves

This is a love story.

It was the morning after our big snowstorm, and I was out taking pictures, of course: snow-covered trees, and roads, and hay bales. It was awfully cold, and my fingers were already near-frozen when I returned from my quick jaunt around the yard and neighborhood.

Who did I find watching and waiting for me on our front porch but my two loves: my husband and my Tabbycat! Dexter is an indoor-only cat unless he is being carried, but he enjoys enjoys going out for some fresh air several times per day. So we are generally happy to oblige.

Before bringing the cat out to enjoy a breath of ultra-chilly air, my husband had just returned from the yard, where he had fed the birds their morning peanuts. Much to his great joy, he had also discovered a bunny (A BUNNY!) waiting by its food tray for breakfast.

We believe the bunny to be Sneaky Bunzini, offspring of our dear friend Mini Bunzini. Its tracks through the yard give evidence of impressive leaps: 17 and a half feet between prints. Somebody's getting some serious AIR under it!

And so it was that I did take pictures of our snow, but this one beat them all out: the photo of my two loves waiting by the front door for me to return home. Inside is warmth and hot coffee and breakfast snacks. And love, true love . . .

I have shown you pictures that included my husband before, but generally from afar. He has appeared on top of our house with a broom looking a bit like a fiddler on the roof; and in pictures with his wild bunnies (trust: take one, and take two). In our hiking and backpacking scenes, he is usually the elusive figure setting the pace, disappearing into the woods far ahead of me (hiker, and backpacker).

I have shared some of the chapters of our great love story here. Perhaps it's time to share more of our story. We met 30 years ago this year, in August of 1986, in a laundromat near the bus station in State College, while I was engaged to be married to somebody else. (That marriage clearly was not destined to be, with many apologies to somebody else.)

I was reading Lolita and this cute, dark-haired guy arrived, driving a wrecked Chevy Malibu. After a friendly chat, he asked me for my phone number and I gave it to him. That evening, I met a girlfriend for dinner, and all I could talk about was the handsome man I had met in the laundromat.

And my husband told me later that after meeting me, he went out with his buddies one last time, but he told them that was it, he was "throwing away his little black book," as he'd finally met the girl he was going to spend his life with. He left them and went to a pay phone; phoned the number I gave him; set up our first date.

Then we dated for 22 years. In October 2008, he almost died, and I married him to save his life (read a bit of that story here). I almost lost him again two years ago in a terrible winter car accident, but true love won that day; and he lived through that too. And now here we are: living happily ever after! (Isn't it good to see him smile?)

On the Monday morning that he asked me to marry him (and marry him NOW, as in: as soon as physically possible), he was sitting in a hospital bed, dying. I came to visit him, but he ended up coming along home with me: he discharged himself against medical advice, and we left the hospital to get our marriage license.

Later that week, we would end up getting married in Blair County because we couldn't get any judges in Centre County to perform the ceremony quickly enough. (Oddly enough, after 22 years, it was a story of hurry up and wait.)

Shortly after our wedding ceremony at the justice of the peace on Friday of that week in Tyrone, I would take my new husband to Centre Community Hospital, where they would send him by ambulance to Hershey Medical Center. And so it was that this is how our marriage began.

It was a pretty dire beginning, but rest assured that we have had lots and lots of fun since then! Did you ever wonder why my most frequently given piece of advice is "Seize the Day"? Now you know why!

So here, after all this time, is a portrait of my husband and my cat: my two biggest loves. My husband . . . fiddler on the roof, earner of the trust of bunnies, hiker, backpacker, survivor, love of my life. Yes, this is where my heart lives.

The song to accompany this image . . . When I went to visit my husband in the hospital (just before he became my husband) and he asked me to marry him, we got his things and went out to my car to leave. I had just bought a new Journey CD based on a brand new song of theirs I had heard on the radio and fallen in love with.

That brand new Journey CD was in the CD player, and that wonderful song was the first track that came on when we turned on the car and began to drive away. It's as fitting a love song as any for us, and I remember crying as I listened to it, marveling that we were finally getting married, but under such strange circumstances, after all these years.

The soundtrack: Journey, After All These Years.

And now to continue the business of living happily ever after!

Forever and ever, amen.