I've always said that I am a dinosaur. I came of age in the 60's, graduated high school in 1967. It was the Age of Aquarius. It was the age of feminism, burning bras, choosing career first. But all I ever wanted was to be a wife and mother--to have a home and a family.
In January of 1970 I transferred to a college in Texas. I made friends with the other girls on the floor of my dorm. One girl , I'll call her M, had a picture of a nice looking young man in her room. I asked if that was her boyfriend. She was very quick to tell me that they used to date, but now they were just friends. After a while, I was walking back to the dorm from class and she was outside talking to this young man. She introduced me to R. I would see him several times during the course of the spring semester. You see, while he went to school in another town, his family lived in the town where our school was. So, when he was home visiting family, he would visit M, too.
In the fall of 1970 R and I started dating. I honestly don't remember our first date or any of that romantic stuff, but we became an "item". By this time M had moved to another town to do the clinical work for her degree. I always thought that she was happy that R had found someone to make him happy. By Christmas he had been home with me a couple of times and spent time with my family. After he had gone back to school after Christmas, he was in a pretty bad traffic accident. He had a head injury and to this day loves to show you where they sewed his ear back on.
By the end of the semester we were engaged and we were married in August 1971. Our first child was born in October 1972, to be followed by more children in June 1974, December 1976, April 1980 and August 1985. Five wonderful children. We now have two wonderful granddaughters.
Fast forward to February 2008. We had had a good life--not a perfect marriage, far from it, but I believed in our marriage and I thought he did, too. R walked into the bedroom and said "You'll never guess who I got an email from!" Turns out M had "googled" him and found his email address and wrote to him. Ostensibly, she wanted closure. I've never understood why anyone would need closure from a relationship when she hadn't seen the guy in almost 40 years. Anyway, to make a very long story short--six weeks later he had moved out and asked for a divorce. They are now living together in Georgia. In fact, he moved to Georgia on our 37th wedding anniversary.
