Honestly, our whole story began shortly after the birth of my first child. My brother gave me a book to read to help keep my sanity while staying up with the baby. I was, at the time, married to a man who had little interest in me or anything I said or did: I was basically the housekeeper/babysitter. I had a lot of hours in the day to fill up, so I had requested a big, thick paperback book. My brother delivered The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan. That was in 1991.
Fast forward to 1997. I was in the process of extricating myself from a bad marriage, and I was lonesome, depressed, and generally certain that I would be alone for the rest of my life. Nobody marries a divorcée with two small children. I did, though, have internet access, and was a regular member on a Sci-Fi Fantasy BBS dedicated to Robert Jordan. It was the only BBS of which I had ever been a member until this one. I didn’t shop on the internet. I didn’t belong to AOL or any online dating sites. When I logged on, I checked my mail and then went to read the bulletin board, and maybe chatted on the site’s chat a while if the kids were asleep. Barely a month into my membership there, I made several friends(who to this day I still consider very good friends and try to see them whenever I can -"Hi! Draelin! ), and I got talked into downloading this crazy new message program called ICQ. So I did and developed a small list of folks who I could talk with at any hour of the day or night. Now, I wasn’t looking for anything more than someone with whom I could have an adult conversation, and besides, we were pretty far flung: California, North East Coast, Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, Australia, etc. Romance was the furthest thing from my mind.
I added a fellow named Stonebow to my ICQ friends list on September 2, 1997. He was very witty, well read, and seemed genuinely interested in talking to me. We chatted back and forth, emails, and ICQ for about a week until one of us (and I honestly don’t remember which) suggested a phone call. Naturally, I was terrified. I desperately want to make a good impression, but I have quite an accent, I am in Arkansas, and I was, at the time, working as a payroll secretary. He was at UPENN, had graduated from Deerfield Academy in MA, and seemed so cultured. I felt hopelessly outclassed, kind grubby and small, but I didn’t imagine it would hurt to talk to him. He had the most beautiful voice…like honey. We talked of several mundane things, hobbies, and interests, but by the time I hung up the phone, I was in love. I had those internal monologues, too, about being crazy…and I haven’t even lain eyes on this person! He could be a troll (the hairy kind that live under bridges or overpasses) or an ax-murderer! He wasn’t though.
Three and a half months later, I found myself at the airport in Little Rock to pick him up. He’d flown down to visit for the new year, and it would be the first time we’d seen each other in person. We’d each seen a small snapshot of the other, but pictures leave a lot out. I still chuckle over the fact that I dressed to go to the airport like I was dressing for a cocktail party. I changed clothes at a friend’s house after work on my way to the airport, and she assured me that by midnight, my dismembered body would probably be floating in the river behind my house. I drove to the airport and literally snuck in the furthest side door I could find. I slowly walked toward the waiting areas and tried see him before he saw me. Stonebow was sitting on a bench, facing the window and reading. I couldn’t tell much from behind him, but for some reason, he chose that moment to look up and out the window. My reflection was in the glass, so he turned around and I froze. I could not breathe or feel my legs. If I had tried to walk they would have broken off at the thigh. I try to rationalize the nimbus of light that seemed to float around him by attributing it to the fact that I still wasn’t breathing. If he hadn’t walked up and put his arms around me, I would have collapsed or shattered or both. Then he kissed me, and words fail me at that point. It was like every fiber of my being shimmered and then settled into place, like my whole entire life had been a holding pattern until this point, and now time could move forward. Love seems a very poor, insufficient word to describe what I felt.
We married in May of 2000, and have added one more child to our happy little family. I have a small ceramic sun catcher hanging on my kitchen window that says “and they lived happily ever after”. Yes, that’s it exactly.