...Like Breathing Out and Breathing In

I've never been a hockey fan-actually, never much for ice skates. We have a beautiful Ice Rink in Norwich that we went to when our children were younger (and so were we) but I don't think I've been in it for the last eight to ten years. It's me, not them.

Back to the hockey. The first time I saw her she was wearing a Buffalo Sabres hockey jersey-a souvenir, so to speak (as I was to learn) from an earlier relationship. (I'm fine with the memory because I got the girl in the jersey.) To be honest, if the Sabres, or any hockey team had looked as good in their jerseys as she did in this one, I'd have become a huge fan of the struggles to capture Lord Stanley's cup years earlier.

She was tall-probably taller than I, thin, with long straight hair. I had seen her in a club Chris and I went to in Frankfurt am Main's Sachsenhausen district and this was later and we were at another place, "Old Smuggler's", beyond the Hauptwache near the Eschenheimer Tor district.

She was, and is, so beautiful, I forgot to breathe and the moment I saw her I knew I would marry her. I didn't know her name, know how to meet her, or know anything about her but I knew I would marry her.

I'm not a person with a strong religious faith (me, not Him) but by the time we got engaged thirty-two years ago last Wednesday (the 4th of March; it's engraved in my wedding ring) I came to believe that it wasn't, and couldn't be coincidence or happenstance that had crossed our paths.

I cannot conceive of how wretched my life would be without her--how, in a hundred different ways every day, everything I do and everything I am is because of her. She almost makes the day begin. Happy Birthday, Angel Eyes.