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Sep. 2nd, 2009

pudding

thirty-one years and counting

mood: happy


photo by asantavi.


Today Len and I are celebrating our 31st wedding anniversary!

( Read more... )
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Posted at 08:11 am | | Leave a comment | 72 comments | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend

Sep. 2nd, 2007

rose lady

so walk all over me, why don't ya?

mood: happy


Jama and Len
London, England
(photo by my brother, Newton)

Today Len and I are celebrating our 29th wedding anniversary. 

It's fun to think about how we met.

His version (the wrong one):  She crossed two oceans and a continent and sought me out.

(Don't listen to him.)

My version (the right one):  I went to England to teach high school English to American children in London. I had studied a lot of dead white poets, loved the Beatles, British accents, Pooh and Paddington. England was the place I simply had to be. 

When I moved into my new flat in Wimbledon, Mr. Kearney, the landlord, told me an American engineer was living upstairs. "He pops back and forth between here and Algeria. You'll see him soon enough."  The flats in the building were actually floors of a single home that Mr. Kearney had converted into individual units. So we all had to share the same front door. 

It was quiet for about a week. Then one day I heard the front door slam (and the windows quake), someone running up the stairs, and heavy footsteps on my ceiling.

CLUMP CLUMP CLUMP. I knew it! A giant was living upstairs. He walked all over my little kitchen, over to the sitting room and bedroom, over to the bathroom, over and over again. A heavy footfall, a determined, restless walker. What did he look like?

A dreamer and hopeless romantic, I pictured a Robert Redford type: tall, dirty blonde tousled hair, blue eyes, rumpled plaid shirt, worn briefcase (real leather). Of course he would drive a sportscar. That's why his hair was always tousled and windblown. More and more charming. (Before I left Hawaii, I had dreamed that I would meet someone who would drive me around the English countryside in a sportscar. Paul McCartney would certainly qualify, if he was available.) Did I already say tall?

I waited for the right moment. The mystery person finally slammed his door, pounded down the stairs, and slammed the front door on his way out. I ran to my front window to take a peek. Oh. Wow.

My first thought: he's old.  Why had I assumed he would be young? He wasn't particularly handsome. He was short. And, God help me, bald. Well, to be fair, not completely bald. He did have a few hairs on top that could, with a writer's vivid imagination, get tousled if a hurricane blew in. He had a sportscar, though. A prussian blue Triumph. 

Well, we got married about a year later. We are opposites in almost every way: English was his least favorite subject in school, he still doesn't know all the Beatles' first names (sacrilege), he is very outgoing and makes friends easily, he loves driving in the snow, and I've got lots of hair. 

I do believe fate brought us together. Even after 30 years, we are still soulmates. And to be fair, Len is only three years older than I am (I guess that made me around 13 when I went to London.) And he still drives a sportscar.

So you see, his version of our meeting is wrong, wrong, wrong. I did not seek him out. I simply followed a very strong instinct fueled by my love of England. Best move I ever made.
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Posted at 10:48 am | | Leave a comment | 24 comments | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend