Today is Sunday and I sent my sweetie a text when I got home from church. We are doing the long distance thing for the moment but that will be changing soon but I’ll get into that another day. As it turns out, he was at work, apparently in a staff meeting with a customer. He likes to text while he is in meetings; I think it keeps him awake. He sent a text “Luv me today?”. Of course I said of course, then asked him the same. He texted “Yep, since the day I first laid eyes on you”. That put a grin on my face because I know what that means.
When he first laid eyes on me, it was twenty years ago, in Angeles City, Republic of the Philippines. I was stationed there and he was visiting from Korea. I met him at the military recreation club and if we didn’t fall in love at first sight, it was with first sentence. I was very comfortable traveling the country and would fearlessly go to visit all sorts of places that I heard about. Most of the men who were stationed in the Philippines were more interested in meeting the Filipinas who worked the bars outside the base gates so I was not interested in any of the guys from my base.
I wanted to show my sweetie all the places that I loved and he let me. And what an adventure it was. We swam at fancy hotels downtown, shopped at open air markets and explored the malls of Manila. Once, when returning from Manila, we were the only Americans on a Rabbit bus (the local bus line). It was pitch dark and the bus was speeding through the country side and the rice patties. It was scary but romantic…until the bus broke down. Within an hour, the driver and some helpers repaired the bus using the light of flash lights and we were on our way. We both always remember the sense of danger and sleeping in each others arms in a roasting hot Rabbit Bus. We fell in love during those days.
Things happened and we lost twenty years of being together but my sweetie and I have found each other again. So when he says “since the day I first laid eyes on you”, I know what he means and I know that he means it. He loves me, no doubt.
I love historical movies. I love that feeling of being swept away to another time, a more romantic era than my own. This past weekend, I watched Elizabeth The Golden Age. Elizabeth, which is part 1 of this series, came out several years ago but I just saw it on DVD in November of 2007. Because of my busy lifestyle, commuting back and forth to the city, rushing everywhere I go, I have no time to create a romance of my own.
I loved both movies, Elizabeth and the Golden Age. Absolutely loved it. Cate Blanchett gave a wonderful performance as Queen Elizabeth. I loved seeing the transition from timid princess who relies on advisers to an unflinching queen who led England into prosperity. She kept her humanity, kindness and love of her country throughout her reign. When she blasted the Spanish embassador with the “I too can command the winds” tyraid, it gave me chills. Thumbs up to Elizabeth!
In junior high school, we studied Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Wreck of the Hesperus. If you are not familiar with the poem, it is about a stubborn sea skipper who refuses to heed the advice of his experienced crew and loses his life and the life of his daughter who is sailing with him. My teacher, Mrs. Sporacio, took several weeks took several weeks with the class to study this poem until each student unerstood the meaning of each line. I grew to love the simple rhythm and the descriptive adjectives. I memorized the poem and have never forgotten it.
In the poem, the ship wreck takes place on the reef of Norman’s Woe. In my imagination, I imagined that Norman’s Woe would be located on some rocky coast of England but it is actually located in Gloucester, Mass. This summer, I’m going to take a trip there to see Hammond Castle and Norman’s Woe. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate a nearly life long love of The Wreck of the Hesperus.
I was laughing with my older sister today on the telephone. She is five years older than me which isn’t much but when you are a little kid, those years are a world apart. I am the second oldest so I spent alot of my childhood following my big sister and listening to her ideas and day dreams. Even without my sister’s input, I was always trying to figure things out in life. I had some wacky ideas about things and my older sister only added to my concocted conclusions about things.
For instance, I can remember thinking that white bread turned to wheat bread when it came out of the toaster. When I asked for candy at the super market, my mom would scream “I ain’t got no candy money”! I thought to myself that I wished her job gave her equal amounts of candy money, meat money and vegetable money. It looked to me like all they EVER gave her was meat and vegetable money. I thought that the color of a white person’s hair could be determined by the letters in their names. Teachers whose names ended in vowels had black hair but consonants had blond hair. This formula worked every time. Mrs. Blakeman, Mrs O’Reilly and Mr. Rosenburg all had light hair while Mrs. Fiorelli, Mr. Rizzo, Mr. Mastrogiavonni, and Mrs. Rocchetti had black hair (I grew up in NJ…hey, whaddaya gonna do?).
When I was seven, my older sister told me that boys had three testicles which I believed until I was 16 years old! This same sister who was full of wisdom told me that babies were born from a woman’s anus because why else would they strain the way they do during childbirth. My older sister wanted to share everything with me so when she started reading the pimp and whore stories of Donald Goines, I got to read those too. One day, after seeing a drug bust on the news, I informed my mom that that could not possibly have been heroin in the photos because heroin melts at room temperature and has to be stored in ziplock bags. That began my mom screening my books.
I really don’t have a point to make with this little confession except to say thanks to my older sister for sharing the wisdom.
In junior high school, we studied Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Wreck of the Hesperus. If you are not familiar with the poem, it is about a stubborn sea skipper who refuses to heed the advice of his experienced crew and loses his life and the life of his daughter who is sailing with him. My teacher, Mrs. Sporacio, took several weeks took several weeks with the class to study this poem until each student unerstood the meaning of each line. I grew to love the simple rhythm and the descriptive adjectives. I memorized the poem and have never forgotten it.