Besides being a heretic, a misanthrope, and a cynic I also admit to being a romantic. A hopelessly optimistic and delusional romantic. If that makes sense to you, it doesn't to me. I don't understand myself at all. This prevents me from thinking I understand other people.
I grew up reading the classics. 'Readers Digest Condensed Classics for Young People' to be precise. My parents had ordered the set and we would get a book every month or so. Each book had four or five abridged classics. I read them all.
Captain Horatio Hornblower, Great Expectations and Beau Geste were my favorites.They were stories about adventure, honor, and romance. I cried the first time I finished Great Expectations. I could relate to Pip's broken heart, his dashed expectations.
Reading these books as a youth I developed a code of ethics and honor that might seem archaic. I was definitely more influenced by these classics than I was by the culture I grew up in the 60s and 70s.
It should be no surprise, then, that I was totally unsuited and unprepared for modern warfare, excuse me, modern dating.
My views on romance were also informed by growing up with a strong-willed, highly intelligent mother and three strong-willed highly intelligent sisters. My brothers and I learned how to not argue at an early age.
I became convinced that a woman would not do anything she didn't want to do. I considered romantic novels and movies where men had the upper hand as utter nonsense and rubbish.
I also believed that if the intelligence that created the universe entrusted the females of our species with childbirth then that was telling. It established a spiritual/biological priority which I strongly felt had to be respected.
My approach, which failed utterly for decades, was to be friends with all the intelligent, strong women I met and someday one of them would find me worthy of their company. I strove to conduct myself in such a way that respect and admiration of the opposite sex were my default settings.
After decades of disappointments, heartaches and frustrations, I was starting to think I might have been mistaken. When I went to seminary in New Jersey my plan was to be an ordained minister, get a small rural charge in western Virginia and bounce around the hills in my pickup truck with my two dogs.
I was not prepared for what actually happened.
I met a child of immigrants. Her father was half Sri-Lankan and half British. Her mother was German. Her parents met in London in a class where they were learning to speak English. She was born in England but moved to Ottawa, the capital of Canada, when she was four.
That meant she had a Canadian, not a Monty Python accent. Although she was one quarter Indian, she passed for white. She had two highly intelligent and wonderful children. She was going through a divorce.
She belonged to a heretical Christan denomination. She worked as an intern at a drug rehabilitation residential facility in Newark, New Jersey.
She had a radical, egalitarian approach to social justice. All of that was stunning. But the most incredible thing was she found me good company.
We never really dated, which was a good thing because I was terrible at dating (see above). We just kept on enjoying each other's company. We took walks. We ate at diners (New Jersey has awesome diners). We talked.
In December 2002 we got married. We didn't have a wedding. We did that justice of peace thing. Afterwards, we ate at a diner and went to a bookstore.
Every day with her has been Valentine's Day. I don't think about the past much anymore, but when I do I realize that for me, it was worth the wait. We have romance, adventure, mutual admiration and mutual respect. Maybe I was right about some things, after all.
"Come with me, go places, once more for the ages."
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