A year ago
01/02/2008 11:30 p.m.

The story doesn't begin here at all, but it's where I'm going to start.

Just over a year ago, if anyone had told me that I would be in a long term relationship, reunited with Jeremiah, I would have scoffed them off the face of the planet. It just didn't seem possible. First of all, he is 18 years younger than me (he's 27 and I'm 45), and while he is an absolutely wonderful human being and an old soul very interested in his spiritual well being like me, we had decided years ago that despite the amazing bond we developed, the age difference was too vast (to put it simply). On top of that, as of just over a year ago, he had been in a relationship with a woman his own age (for the better part of four years) whom I believed would be his wife someday. I fully expected to someday hear of the marriage, and then later, of their children. It seemed right, and I was at peace with being happy for him and his bride. Exchanging only the most casual emails (usually a Christmas greeting), we stayed caught up with one another and the major events of our lives.

Well, last Christmas, I sent him the usual "Merry Christmas to you and yours" and his reply was his contemplation of coming up to Oregon for a visit. I wasn't sure what he meant. Did he mean with or without his significant other, and how would I handle that? Well, as it turned out, they had broken up not long before, and he was setting out to travel (he is really a nomad at heart) and thought to include my town as a stop. We started talking, and it wasn't long before we talked in terms of beginning an exclusive relationship. On January 1, 2007, we decided even before he got here that we were both at ages where it wouldn't be completely unheard of to give a relationship a try.

It took him some time to wrap things up in California - finish out his job responsibly, say goodbye to long time friends, etc, and he got here on March 12th. I took a week's vacation, and we spent a week in Portland and on the coast getting re-aquainted and having fun. I didn't know how things would be with my family, with my children especially. At first, we decided we would try it as a visit. Well, things were amazingly wonderful and he decided he would stay with me, except that he had trouble finding a suitable job at first and spent a week in Eugene checking things out there to see if he could find employment. I'm pretty basically rooted here until my youngest children graduate (the triplets are 16 and will graduate June of 2009) and I'm also my grandmother's sole caretaker. But being separated for that week was so excruciatingly difficult for both of us that we decided he would take whatever job he could find here in The Dalles, and so he came back, applied at a local grocery chain and was hired.

My children are crazy about him, his integrity, his humor, the subtle guidance he sometimes offers them, his spiritual point of view. They have developed a respect for him that surprises me, given their history of general disinterest or downright dislike of the men I've dated over the past couple of years. My elder family members (my grandmother, aunt and mother) are very impressed by him and like him very much, even though they admit to skeptism about a solid future with a man 18 years younger than me.

For myself, I have run the gamut of emotions in the last year. I've wanted to run away at times, just to save myself from my (anyone's) greatest fear - eventual rejection. Other times, I've found myself pressing in despite the lack of any statement of intention from him. I've been concerned about the possibility that he would eventually (and understandably) desire to be with a woman with whom he could have his own biological children (as I had my tubes tied after the triplets AND my childbearing years are surely winding WAY down). I have had to lay aside my expectation that this would progress in a traditional fashion. I have found my feelings deepening despite the self-protective boundaries I've run into where my own heart is concerned. I'm just not sure "where" we are headed in terms of being traditionally grounded. I would prefer marriage, (though I'm not quite sure why in light of my track record in that department) feeling too old to be someone's "girlfriend" especially given the depth of my feelings for him, and, also, his stated feelings for me. I think, perhaps, we simply have different ideas of the marriage endeavor and what that means.

But the one thing I've discovered is that my heart and soul are his clear through to the end of my life. This is the one. There will be no other. Wherever this journey takes me, and even if it leaves me alone in its conclusion, there has never been nor will there ever be a greater love for me to experience than this one...all the glory, challenges, fears, whatever work must be done to see this through, I am joyfully participating 100%. It doesn't involve intention. It just is.

We make each other laugh so much. We engage in these deeply spiritual and philisophical discussions ranging from Jesus to Krishna to Great Spirit and beyond, the beginning of time, past lives, future lives; goals for ourselves as individuals and how those might synchronistically evolve into to goals we can achieve together, plans for our future; how to equip my children (slowly becoming his children too)to deal with life in this age of quarrel and chaos; vegetarianism, the challenge of cooking vegetarian and still pleasing the meat eaters in our family; politics (a subject I had historically avoided due to my inability to understand it globally until Jeremiah 'splained' things to me in his way). We share passion for music, and we love jammin together (him on guitar, me on keyboard). We both love our passion for written expression and sharing that passion. We appreciate each other's particular challenges in living, and, so far, support one another through them with love and compassion and tolerance. We enjoy one another's company so much, sometimes unable to find words to describe it, just "being" together without saying a word. Whatever this is that we're doing together, it just feels amazingly right.

And, lastly, I just find myself delighted and grateful that he would find any pleasure in being a part of my funny little life, with all my quirks and idiosyncrasies, with all my overwhelming responsibilities, that he would love me with my big forhead and overweight self and goofy teeth. I feel blessed, so blessed, and for the present, I'm not inclined to change a thing.


I am currently Devoted