Everybody always asks me how I met my husband...

I must commit some of these events to paper before I forget them completely. I realized this morning on my drive to work that some memories have already started to merge together, clouding my view of them - like trying to keep the colors of a tye-dye shirt from seeping together. Somehow if I put them on paper I feel like I can only then allow myself to forget them as I have wanted to do for so long. For prosperity, I will prick myself with this pen and allow it to bleed out my emotions, all the pain and the pleasure, for it to be absorbed on the paper, never to hurt me again. The difficult part in purging these thoughts is where to begin. What is the beginning of this tale...my birth...my childhood...college...marriage? Let's go with that, marriage. It feels like a betrayal to talk about our life together, especially since it will cast a bad light on some or all the parties involved and that is not my intention. I will thus use meeting my husband only as a reference in time and try to focus on myself, shouldn't be hard.



It was the summer of my 23rd year. I had graduated college and just quit my job at the racetrack tick window, was moving out of my apartment and briefly back in with my parents. I was on the in-betweens in every aspect of my life, personal and professional. I was still working with the horses in the mornings, but not regularly. About a year prior I had ended my first very serious, live-in, almost engaged but extremely volatile relationship. I didn't do very well on my own that year. Let's just say it was a time of wild behavior and total irresponsibility, the time of my life, but not a time to be repeated.



Peolple always ask me how I met my husband. I showed up at the racetrack one morning looking for work. I met up with a friend of mine at the backside kitchen, a place where some horse trainers would go in the mornings for their am gambling fix - a hot poker game over coffee and cigarettes. Gambling is a terribel addiction, maybe one of the worst of the non-chemical type. If your husband is a drunk and has been out drinking, you will probably be able to tell, but if he is a gambler, and has been out gambling, you may not know unless you check your bank account. My point being that its probably the easiest addiction to hide, thus enabling the adict. Sorry about the tangent, my friend told me that morning that there was a guy stabled in the same barn he was working in that had just shipped in from New Jersey and needed some help. I went back to the barn with him and waited for the new guy from Jersey to show up.

I saw him pull in from where I was standing in the barn. He drove an old beat up...I guess it was an Oldsmobile that the grey paint had faded and lost any shine, so it looked like primer. I'm not sure it if was the smell of horse shit going to my head or what, but when he stepped out of the car and started coming my way I told myself, "This is the last guy I'm going to date." He was small in stature, but broad in the shoulders. Being at the track I was used to short guys. He had on workboots, jeans and a red flannel jacket, very rugged. He told me I "Was like an angel," the way I had just showed up when he needed someone. I was just happy to have a job, it was a perk that he was cute too.

It didn't take long before he was inviting me out to lunch after work, then home with him to Atlantic City, which is where he was commuting from two hours one way. We did all of the new couple things, we browsed the antique shops on our route to break up the monotomy of the drive, stop at the roadside stands for Jersey corn and tomatoes. He even bought gladiolas once in a while when we'd see them. Looking back just now, I realize that our relationship was that of new love, simple and uncomplicated, it just took extra time to evolved into a mature relationship...it was like a relationship with a severe learning disability.