I got a note from my friend in the mail. He just got married. It was a private ceremony, he didn’t invite anyone.
He enclosed a handwritten poem:
“Thought I’d be single until I rot,
But someone thought I was hot,
Look at me, I just tied the knot.”
Cute.
My friend is a bona fide poet. He went to school for such things. He was an eccentric free spirit who lived alone in a poet’s ratty apartment—which smelled like a wet bird dog.
He stayed up too late, writing poet’s poems. He ate ice cream for breakfast. Cereal for supper.
He had big plans for his life.
Then she happened. He met her at his nephew’s soccer game. She had three kids.
Our middle-aged, fun-loving, bird-dog smelling bachelor became a family man with three kids, a minivan, and a backyard that won’t mow itself.
Yes. I like love.
I know another woman who found love. Her husband divorced her at age seventy-three. She was a wreck. She didn’t think she would survive.
She stayed indoors for a few years, and hardly ever saw
the sun.
Then, something happened. She began to make friends. She went to the beach some. She stayed up late, she went on dates.
Then, he happened. She met a retired boat captain—he steered barges on American river routes.
She married him. He asked what she wanted for a wedding gift. She wanted to see the world. He booked a one-year trip to Europe the very next month.
I could tell love stories all day.
Like the one about Stephanie and her husband—now there’s a story. They were told they couldn’t have kids. It devastated them.
A few years later, her best friends passed away unexpectedly. Her friends were in their thirties, with a two-year-old son.
Stephanie adopted the orphan and welcomed the child into a pink-walled nursery she’d already given up on.
Then,…