For My Wife

I've offered these thoughts in this space in previous years. I pretend it's tradition and don't actually care what you think it is. Glad we got that out of the way.

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 a very long time. 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 hers, I'd have become a huge fan of the struggles to capture Lord Stanley's cup years earlier.

She was tall-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. There were a few obstacles: I didn't know her name, how to meet her, or anything about her at all 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 forty-three 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 allowed our paths to cross.

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 or will ever be is solely because of her. She almost makes the day begin. Happy Birthday, Angel Eyes.
-bill kenny