SHE SAYS: The Story of Us

Michael and I met in the fall of 1997.  I was a longtime paralegal for a small law firm, and in the end-stages of a terminal first marriage.  We hired this guy as a law clerk; he was awaiting his bar results, and if he passed, he would be offered a position as an associate attorney.  I still remember the first time we met face-to-face - he was being introduced around the office and he shook my hand with this big, eager grin on his face, presumably excited to have been offered a job, and I looked at him and thought, "You have no idea what you're in for . . ." Yeah, you think you're going to help people and make lots of money and have this important, prestigious job?  Just wait, I thought.  The long hours, the demanding, micromanaging boss . . .

Anyhow, he and I hit it off immediately.  We shared the same sarcastic sense of humor, and almost from the beginning, it felt like we were in cahoots.  He made me laugh - a lot!  He was really smart and one of the first things I noticed was how well he wrote . . . swoon.  But seriously, despite all this, I was committed to my marriage, and although I really, really liked Michael, it was purely platonic.  Michael had a girlfriend, too, to whom he always referred as "my girlfriend" as if she didn't have a name, and I started wondering if she was just something he made up!  She was real, alright, and eventually, he proposed to her, and then promptly broke it off two weeks later.  But that's his story, so I'll say no more about it.

Eventually, he began to express feelings towards me that went beyond friendship (while also dating his way around the entire twelfth floor), telling me things that I had no idea how to respond to.  I resisted; I really valued his friendship and admired him as a person, but I was married, and however bad my marriage was, I was committed.

After a year and a half of unhappily working at our little firm (I knew it wouldn't turn out to be what he thought it was cracked up to be, poor bastard!), Michael, ummm, parted ways with the firm.  On the day he came to collect his things, he left an envelope on my desk on which he had written instructions to me not to open until he had gone.  Well, that put butterflies in my stomach.  What in the world could it be?  After he left, I opened it with shaky hands and inside was a card in which he had written a very sweet, very heartfelt note, telling me that I was his soul mate.  After that, he was on my mind all the time.

We stayed in touch, but now it was clear that we had crossed over into something beyond purely friendship.  I would meet him for lunch or for coffee (not telling my husband where I was going), sometimes bringing my toddler son with me as a "buffer," to ensure I wouldn't become reckless and do something I might regret.

To make a long story short, eventually it did turn into more, and my marriage which had been slowly imploding for years finally came crumbling down, ending in my husband's death by drug overdose in June, 1999.

There came a day - I can still picture it, Michael sitting in his car in my driveway, me standing, talking through the open driver's door - when Michael started talking about Kevin, who was two and a half by now.  He said, "I wonder if I'll get to show him how to have a catch.  I wonder if I'll get to see him grow up."  I had no idea these words were going to come out of my mouth, but what I said was, "You know what I think?  I think I'm going to marry you someday."

Michael and I were married on July 20, 2001 on the beach where we had shared some really good times, at sunset, with the waves lapping at our bare toes, surrounded by an intimate group of our closest friends and family.  After Michael and I exchanged vows we had written ourselves, he got down on bended knee and made vows to my son Kevin, who was four at the time.  There was not a dry eye on that beach, and Michael has raised Kevin as his own all these years.

Since then, we have added five more kids to our brood, and currently have yet another on the way.  We have bought and sold a house, buried a parent, faced a surprise diagnosis of Down syndrome for one of our children, battled cancer, dealt with family issues, child-rearing issues, fought, loved, laughed, cried, and laughed some more.  We've had our ups and downs, to say the least.  But through most of it, our strength together seems to be a sense of humor.

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So, this blog is our new little experiment.  Our public dialogues seem to entertain people quite a bit, and the idea for this was born on Facebook.  We argue about just about anything under the sun; most of it is good-natured, and I'm almost always right.