Making Choices

We had settled into our new townhouse that overlooked a beautiful pond surrounded by mature trees and grassy areas. A black wrought iron fence circled the pond giving it a stately appearance. The two swans on the pond made lazy circles in the afternoon sun casting shadows in the rippled water. Life was perfect for them and life was perfect for us. Our wedding had been the most beautiful and romantic event of a lifetime, I felt we were the only couple to feel the way we felt about each other. Our wedding day was made to order as the sun peeped up about the same time I had awakened and soon wrapped its warmth around everything in a relentless grip that was there for the day. The puffy white clouds drifted slowly across the deep blue sky as I was helped into my gown by my bridesmaids and walked slowly down the stairs to my waiting family for the trip to the church. I took one last glance into the mirror and said goodbye to the young lady who would soon be a woman with a husband and responsibilities of her own.

 Moving from our hometown was a decision we thought to be a good one. We were starting out fresh and we needed to be closer to John’s work. I was willing to drive the thirty five miles back to our hometown each day to work, as I started to work later in the day than John and it gave me a chance to visit my parents during the week.

We had met when I graduated from high school. John and I had graduated from the same high school and lived in the same town. He knew some of the same people that I knew; but we had never met. He was two years older and he had gone to our local Junior college.

When my best friend Mary introduced him to me at a party I felt comfortable in his company right away. We could not believe that we had never officially met. I had seen him at school and knew his family had a sports store on the opposite side of town from where we lived, but it didn’t matter we had the rest of our life to get to know each other and now we had a whole town to explore together.

I had gone to work right out of high school as a receptionist at an optical center. I had plans to go on to college, but my father had some medical problems and we couldn’t afford it at the time. John finished his two years of Junior College and went to work for a company in a managerial position. It was a day job with ten employees under his direction. This left plenty of time to be together in the evenings.

Our first year was a whirlwind courtship; but we had rediscovered our hometown. He took me to places he had gone in his early childhood and I did the same. Simple fun things, things that didn’t cost money, things that made us both laugh as we sat for hours in the park planning our future together. As the first year of our courtship ended I was so in love that I had forgotten all about college. I thought I had it all figured out and we would make it work.