Be My Valentine

People are asking for love stories and it struck me that I don't have one. How pitiful does THAT sound? I don't have a romantic prince-charming-on-a-white-horse-taking-me-away-from-all-of-this story.

It's sad to think I have gone this far in my life and through the years, I gave up on the Prince Charming dream. I started this path when I was very, very young. My Dad was my Prince Charming and I adored him. Then one day when I was 19, another Prince Charming rode by and swept me off my feet. We married and we had two children, both boys. Seven years later, when our boys were 2 and 3 years old, he became disenchanted and found what he desired in another man.

This was an event that started a heavy soul searching on my part. I look back now and think about how young I was and how innocently I saw things - it was just a given that a princess married her Prince Charming and they lived happily ever after for ever and ever amen.

Then I started dating "real men" and found most of them wanted freedom and several partners - and they avoided having partners with single mothers. (The "package" thing)

For several years I didn’t date. I focused on my boys, my job, our lives. But then HE came along.

When my Significant Other arrived, in a beat-up roaring white ’72 Charger (a steel horse with so much horse power under the hood that it could probably drive itself), he appeared as an overweight, shy, intelligent, awkward auto mechanic. He said he saw me and KNEW that I was his “little red-haired girl.” Just like Charlie Brown. He was smitten. He entered our lives when the boys were 10 and 11, and the same weekend that they had received letters from their Dad, coming out of his closet. To say we were a shell-shocked, ragtag, confused little family was an understatement. And this was absolutely no problem to my future Significant Other. He took them out to his car while he changed the oil, replaced spark plugs, took things apart, got greasy, put things back together, fired up the many-horse power Charger, and generally was an all-male, manly-man, Tim Allen-type guy, even grunting with joy when the motor hummed back to life. The boys were pretty much in awe.

Now, THAT is as romantic as he got. No card. No flowers. No romance. But I fell for him anyway. He was stable. He was committed to just one person – who happened to be me. And he blended in with my boys as naturally as if he were their Dad. His idea of a Valentine Card was to replace the faltering alternator in my car. (Lasts longer than flowers.)

That was 23 years ago. He’s still my Significant Other. He is finally introducing me as HIS significant other, too. Before, for years, I was his girlfriend. I told him that “girlfriend” sounds trivial and IN-significant. I’m not a one-night stand and I’m not temporary. I am not just a fling. I told him that he is my Significant Other because he is important to me; he is a significant part of my life and my happiness. He is my “most important” half of me.

So, that’s my love story. I guess I DO have one after all.

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