A Love Worth Waiting For ...

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."

But It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Cryin'

My mother died in 1998. She was only 67. I say 'only,' because I'm 53 now and 67 doesn't seem old.

In 1998, I was unemployed and suffering from something a doctor called 'chronic fatigue. I called it depression.

In my spare time, which I had a lot of, I was volunteering at the Blacksburg United Methodist church my mom went to and my dad goes to to this day. I had become friends with the senior minister, Rev. Herb Hobbs, who was also the the chaplain for the Virginia Tech football team. He recommended I pursue a career in ministry.

A good friend at church, Dick Arnold, had lived in New Jersey and recommended the seminary at Drew University in Madison.

New Jersey? The armpit of the nation. A place where being a jerk is a point of pride. But Dick Arnold was persistent. I needed to visit Drew University, he kept saying.

So my Dad and I drove up to New Jersey and visited the campus. The campus was set in several acres of forest. It was peaceful and serene. The administration building is so magnificent it has been in several movies. Many people get married on the beautiful lawn behind it.

Still grieving, but needing to get on with a career, I thought three years in this bucolic, spiritual setting could heal as well as prepare for a career in ministry.

What happened in the next three years changed me in ways I didn't think possible. I lived in off campus housing, sharing an old home with four other graduate and seminary students. My bedroom was a converted closet. Please don't ask if the closet had a closet.

But I was single and didn't care. I pared all my belongings down to a couple of suitcases and moved in. My roommates and I got along great. It all started out well. Too well, the cynic in me warned.

It was. After several months, I began to suspect that gregarious Keith was a pedophile. What transpired with Keith deserves its own pages and will be discussed at another time. Socially, I was my usual awkward self and botched a couple of stabs at relationships. Academically, I almost flunked an oral exam and had a professor refuse to grade a final paper for reasons only academics care about.

I was in turmoil by the end of the academic year. I was lonely and confused.

Back home in Blacksburg for the summer, I was too depressed to explain to family and friends the changes I was going through. One day I went to my mother's grave. She is buried in the town cemetery in the middle of town. There is a big, beautiful tree that gives her head stone shade during the hottest part of the day.

I sat there, under the tree, in the shade, crying, wondering. I was at a loss for what to do next. On the walk home from the cemetery I thought of writing someone I had met in one of my classes. At the end of the year, we exchanged addresses. I went home and wrote her a letter.

Even though I was submerged in my own grief, I remembered she seemed sad last time we talked. It's helpful to remind oneself that other people have struggles and tragedies, too. She had talked about how one of her good friends had lost her young daughter after a long illness. I sensed her sadness had other levels, but chose not to pry.

So I wrote her a letter asking how her summer was going. Two days later I got a letter from her. I was shocked. I looked at the postmark. She had mailed it the same day I did!

It was the same kind of letter I wrote,with the "hi, how are you stuff." But at the end of the letter she said her marriage was ending. That explained some of the deeper sadness.

We exchanged letters all summer, getting to know each other better. We explained our theological philosophies and shared family details. Then it was fall and time to go back to school.

I was worried, concerned and excited about what would happen next. I enjoy the company of intelligent, strong women. Most of my female friends were married or lesbians. I have always been comfortable with that, it kept me from falling in love and ruining a good friendship. My track record in love had been one disaster after another. I didn't want to add one more failure to the list.

Tomorrow: Meeting face-to-face.