THE IDES OF MARCH 2010

 Wow!!! I do not think I have ever missed a month of writing at least something. If I don’t jump in quickly,  I will totally miss both The Ides and The Winds Of March.  SOOOO!

Texas March Wind caught me unprepared yesterday at the gas pump.

I opened up the car-door to begin the process of filling the tank.  The wind pinned me between the door and the pump.  The Buick door had become a sailing Spinnaker.  The car, now in park position, actually moved.   I managed to complete the job of filling up the tank and shoving myself back into the car still against the wind.

Still working on the IDES.    

On my personal Ides of March 2002 my long lost sweetheart and I signed our belated (by 42 years) marriage certificate in Richmond Virginia.  My thought was ‘what a significant Greek day to be signing an agreement like this one.’

Paul and I smiled at each other: nothing can go wrong at the forum today.

At age sixty two even if something did go wrong there would not be enough time left in our lives for it to hurt anyone for very long.  So we walked out of the courthouse and went to purchase rings and rent tuxedoes to attest to our signed certificate.  I took Paul’s name, because in 1958-9 that is what we would have done.  There were no hyphens in the ’50s.  Two days later we stood before a home designed alter complete with a prayer kneeling cloth and a priest, who, with prior authority, had moved The James River north so he could officiate the wedding ceremony in his newly expanded Episcopal jurisdiction.  After the ceremony, Father Boston Lackey moved The James back down south to the original flow charted path. We all laughed and called him Moses. We wrote our names and the date into the mid 17th Century edition of The Marriage Book.  Eighty plus good folks, friends and family milled around, ate well, shot the potato cannon at the pine trees, listened to Dr. Schlobaum’s excellent piano with flute and snare-drum and violin with two extra singers and pianist to finish out the band.  It was a St. Patrick’s Day Sunday Bash talked about for many a month afterwards.

That was eight years ago, and that makes April our first whole month of NEW BEGINNINGS.  It takes eight years to settle into each other. I see we are now over half way through April.  We both turn seventy; Paul in March and April for me.

What happened after that day in Richmond, Virginia is another story altogether.  The dream and the reality often do not meet at the end of the road in harmony.

But: That is another story.

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