The Shallow End

On How I Met My Husband

This is for Rach and Beth. The rest of you might want to skip to the next post. ;-)

I’ve never been much of a romance reader, let alone a romance writer, so this will be short.

It was a dark and stormy night.

No, no.

It was a bright and sunny afternoon. Halloween to be exact.

I was wearing a pink linen jacket with lighter pink shell underneath, and a long grey pleated linen skirt, by Liz Claiborne. And pearls. And grey suede pumps.

Details are important, no?

I was at work in San Luis Obispo, CA, minding my own business, when I received a phone call from a friend. Said friend asked if I would like to meet him and his buddy for lunch because they were close by my office (my friend was trying to break into the real estate business and was busy delivering pumpkins to folks’ doorsteps with a note to give him a call if they were interested in selling their home, an odd marketing technique for which I never heard the results; he had solicited help from my now-husband to deliver pumpkins, since this is rather strenuous physical labor for a realtor). “Sure,” I said. So off I went.

I was recently single (this short statement obviously has a lot of back story behind it which I choose not to go into at the moment) but was not searching for a husband, or boyfriend for that matter. He was also recently single and not searching for a wife or girlfriend. This was just supposed to be lunch with friends.

He had a thick Croatian accent and I had to work to understand him, but we swapped travel stories for a long time. He was once a Merchant Marine and left Croatia when he was 14 to travel the world. He’d been everywhere. Of course, I inquired about how he’d come to America and all of that. He first came to San Francisco through an agency that sponsored people to come to the U.S. for work, and then to Beverly Hills where he worked as a chauffeur and domestic help for the stars (Cher, Gene Hackman, Zsa Zsa Gabor, etc.). There was a lot to talk about.

Well, we had so much fun at lunch that they asked me if I would like to go to a costume party that night. “Sure,” I said. So after work, I went to the thrift store. The quickest, easiest thing I could put together was a witch outfit. So I went as a witch and my now-husband went as a sailor/pirate, and some things have not changed much since then. ;-)

We had a fun time at the party and became inseparable right away. He had 2 very young girls (6 months and 2 years old) who were living with their mother most of the time and these are the teenagers that I am helping to raise today (they lived with us full time for 13 years and moved back with their mother last year for a trial period which has not gone well; they return soon). We have never had any children together, by God’s will, but I believe that all things work out for good and there is a reason for this, namely 2 young girls who needed as much love as we had to give.

The End.

posted by Gwynne @ 8:54 AM