Got nothing to do today so I decided to continue reading Robert Fulgrum's book entitled True Love. I posted one short story from this book months ago here.
If you want to be all giddy, read ahead. It will only take a few minutes from your time. And I promise, you'll never regret reading this. Go ahead. Help yourself. :'>
Margery and I were childhood sweethearts dating off-and-on from the time we were thirteen until about age twenty. We were pretty serious about each other. We graduated from high school and our ives changed and separated. She went east to Connecticut and then to college in New Mexico. I went to Ohio, then Hawaii. In time we would marry different people although I would also always consider her my first and strongest love.
Some fifteen years later (about 1978) my life was a mess. Not the sort of life one would deliberately set out to create.
I was suffering from chronic alcohol abuse, a disease which runs in my family. I nearly died from withdrawals and subsequently committed myself to a hospital.
Upon release from the hospital three weeks later, I was physically, emotionally and financially bankrupt. I had no idea what would become of my life.
In short order, I would legally divorce and take custody of two sons aged nine and ten. I would strike off into single parenthood vowing never again to marry.
Several weeks after being released from the hospital, I was sitting around with my mother one evening reviewing a box of family photos. I came across a picture of me and my childhood sweetheart taken before a school dance. We were about seventeen and deeply in love at that time.
I said, "God, why did I have to have that eleven-year marriage. What a disaster. Why couldn't I have married Margery and lived a more normal life instead. I loved her so much. It never even occurred to me to ask her to marry. Why did I have to go through that other marriage: Why did I have to go through all that other stuff?
"I think I will try to find her," I said to my mother. My mother said, "Maybe you'd better go back to the hospital for awhile. You're not even finished with the divorce you're going through. This is not the time to be thinking about another relationship."
"Besides that," she added "you haven't seen nor talked to Margery for how long - fifteen years? She's probably happily married, has four children and lives in New Mexico. Forget her and just concentrate on raising those darling boys."
I reached for the South Bay telephone directory and began looking up people by Margery's maiden name, Southworth. There were a dozen or so of them in the Los Angeles area. I began telephoning them to see if maybe, just maybe I might reach a sister or aunt or someone who might know where she was. I felt very, very strongly about this - compelled to act.
I did not reach her or a relative that night but I reaffirmed to my mother how strongly I felt that I would be seeing her again.
The next morning I left Rolling Hills at 7:30 am to cross the Los Angeles basin for Hollywood, where I worked. For no apparent reason I decided to go a different way. I took a left, I headed for the San Diego freeway, a direction I seldom went since it was a long way to get to work.
As I approached the freeway (along with millions of other commuters), I was stopped by the red light that meters people onto the freeway system there. I waited for the light to change to green.
While I was waiting a tan van pulled up alongside me and began honking. I couldn't quite see up into the van, but I could tell there was a person with large dark glasses driving.
She raised her dark glasses up over her forehead and it was her! Margery Southworth! I was stunned. I put my forehead on the steering wheel and began to cry. Then I started to laugh, I just couldn't believe it. The light changed and I had to get on the freeway. I stayed in the right lane and put on my right blinker to get off the freeway. She responded. We were still communicating, I thought.
We left the freeway and pulled into the parking lot of Mattel Toys. I got out of my car, walked over to her and we gave each other a big hug. We talked and asked each other a few questions (she had been single for fourteen years). I asked for her phone number. Later in that day, I called her and we made arrangements to have dinner the following Friday night.
Eight months later we had a large wedding on a hilltop overlooking our elementary school and Los Angeles. Sixteen years later we are still happily married living in the Federal Way area.
We have both accepted this relationship as a gift, a very special gift from God. A miracle.
-Patrick Godfrey, Federal Way, WA
What did I tell you? It's so lovely, isn't it?
If you really are destined to be together, love will find it's way to keep you together. :'>
-Tinay xx
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