The other old broad

I titled this blog Two Old Broads and No Estrogen but so far it's all about ME, ME, ME.  So here's more about the other one.


Jill is the one I'm dancing with in the picture, my partner of 9 years, my bride of four.  It was May 26, 2007 that we gathered friends and family together and had a big ol' outdoor wedding here in Raleigh.  It was truly a happy day, even though it was so hot the frosting on the cupcakes was melting and the power blew out for the music, so we had to hum through our first dance.

Then last summer, July 24, 2010, we went to Halifax to be legally married, another joyful day.


I had said, after being married twice before, fully and officially heterosexually married to certified born-boys, that I was never going to do that again.  It took me till I was 47 to finally and permanently slam the door of my closet.  I had to make up some lost time!


But then, after only a couple of years. . . here came someone I would never have paired myself with, someone so far the opposite of me that we could barely wave across the distance.  There were hidden explosives at every turn.  We could scarcely carry on a conversation without one or the other of us thinking "She's NUTS!"


So what in the world kept us together?  Integrity, I think.  Honesty --- at least the best way we could manage it.  Willingness.  Listening.  Suspension of disbelief.


She taught me to say "I love you."


I taught her to trust.


We both had to give up the pictures we carried in our minds of who we were and who we would be with.  It turned out that the outsides ---- circumstances, beliefs, appearances, ---- were far less important than fundamental values.  


She has opened doors for me that I was too scared to open myself.  I've never let go of the HER of her, even when she's at her lowest ebb. She found out she's much more capable of book-learning than she thought she was.  I found out I can be committed and faithful in a loving relationship.


Would we have learned these things if we hadn't met? I don't know. The odds of us meeting, dating, working it through, and marrying were so small in the first place.  But now it seems inevitable.

Concrete example:


When we met, she didn't know how to play games. (I think she's ok with me saying this.)  My family is a game playing group of people, but we don't take them seriously.  If a game doesn't make everybody laugh and have fun, then it's not worth playing.  She had never played games that way before, and when she would get ganged up on or disadvantaged, she didn't know it wasn't personal, that she was supposed to know that nobody was being mean, that she was expected to laugh.  After one particularly difficult game night, we talked it over on the way home and I tried to explain it.  She listened and a few days later, we started practicing game playing at home.  By the next time the family got together, she understood and she started having fun, laughing, delighting in "getting" someone or being "gotten" without it being mean-spirited.  Now, she's a game-playin' fool, just like the rest of us, hootin' and hollerin' and having a great time.


I often give games for wedding presents.  I feel that if you can't play games together and have fun doing it, you'll never get through the hard parts of marriage. 



Not a day goes by, for these two old broads, that we don't laugh together.