Happily Ever After – Three Years of Wedded Bliss

Sep 22, 2009 by Peggy Nolan

Warning: This post may cause sudden nausea, the gag reflex, or sudden cavities…read at your own risk

Three years ago today, I married the love of my life. It all started waaaaaaaaaay back in 1980 when I first laid eyes on Richard in geometry class. He was my first boyfriend and I was his first girlfriend, but it wasn’t meant to be. From the last time I saw him in 1982, it took another 25 years for us to reach a certain point in our lives to come full circle.

He says he found me. I say I wasn’t lost. Either way, he made the first move with a little nudge from Serendipity (see…now do you get the name of my blog?) He saw my name on classmates.com and sent me an email. I almost deleted it until I read the subject line, “You have received an email from Richard Nolan.” I think it took me a good thirty minutes to pick myself up off the floor…and when I went to respond, I had to pay $15.00 just to read his email. It was the best $15.00 I’ve ever spent.

We met the next evening for coffee at 9PM and we left the parking lot at 6AM the next morning. Two months later, Richard proposed and I said Yes. It will probably go down in our history as the smartest thing we’ve done. I guess that make us both genuises!

In search of the right words to be spoken at our wedding, I found this poem by Pablo Neruda,

Sonnet XVII

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

I love Richard without knowing how or when or from where. I knew the night we met for that marathon cup of coffee at Denny’s that there was no other for me. I knew I would never kiss another man as long as I lived. I knew I found my WOW.

It’s a feeling that’s with me day in and day out. And it sometimes simply gets so big that words alone can’t come close to describing what it is that I’m feeling when my love for him surronds my being like a warm, snuggly fleece blanket. With Richard, I feel safe, secure, protected, loved and treasured above all others. In Richard, I have found my true love, my kindred spirit, my partner in crime, my soul mate.

Our First Dance, 9/22/2006

And we danced to Rod Stewtart’s “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You”

Richard, if you’re reading this today, I love you beyond measure, beyond time, beyond space. I love you with all of me.