For the Woman I Love

I've never been a hockey fan, actually never much for ice skates period. 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 well over a decade and a half. It's me, not them.

Back to hockey. The first time I saw her she was wearing a Buffalo Sabres hockey jersey. It was a souvenir, so to speak (as I was to learn) from an earlier relationship. I'm fine with that memory because I got the girl in the jersey. To be honest, if the Sabres or any other hockey team had looked half 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 eons ago.. 

She was tall; taller than I am with long, straight, dark hair. I had seen her in a club that 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 then, and remains so to this day, so beautiful I forgot to breathe and at the moment I saw her I knew I would marry her. I didn't know her name, or if she knew any English (I didn't know any German), didn't know how to meet her, or know anything about her except 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 almost thirty-nine (!!) years ago (come Sunday, April 3rd; it's engraved in my wedding ring) I came to believe that it wasn't just, and certainly 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, I love you.
-willibaldoh