I had meant to write this earlier but time has certainly gotten away from me this year.

Often I think about the part of the year that has passed and the part that is yet to come and I wonder if I have accomplished those things that I wanted too.  I also wonder at times what type of year I have had.

One thing I can say for sure:  I have to this date, had a great year.  I have a good job – actually two and I have what I consider my greatest benefit in life: my wife. 

I knew we would be together like we are now – husband and wife – when I met her.  The funny thing is that I was married in the beginning process of divorce and that everything I did with Kelly at the time was without thought.  What I mean by this is that I did not hem and haw or second guess myself or ponder for hours about what I did with her, for her and about her.  It was pretty much love at first sight and I carried forward, not with teenage giddiness but with love like that nonetheless.

One of the enduring memories about being with her initially was music.  Both of us love music:  listening to it, singing it, appreciating it.  I listen to R&B more than she does and she of course listens to gospel more than I do but both of us have enough listening hours and knowledge about each of those genres that we can appreciate them both for what they are and what they do for the spirit at the appropriate time. 

We both grew up in the church:  she has more years under her belt literally in the church than I do, but I think I had a different, maybe condensed intensity than she as my father was a minister – a powerful legacy to follow from behind.  It’s also synchronicity that we both departed from the physical church and then the mental one as adults, each of us in our own way attempting to search for answers that were not supplied in our youth.  We both equally are happy in our current state of self discovery and I certainly respect and support her search.  In doing so, it has become mine as well and that is a powerful binding agent between partners.

We have a ton of parallels in our lives.  When we first got together, a number of people said we shouldn’t for a lot of the typical reasons: rebound, possible player, you should have a plan B, etc.  One of my friends actually told me that I needed to have a plan B.  As Kelly told me, “I didn’t even have a plan A!”  Her own mother said “If you had known her 5 years earlier, you wouldn’t feel the way you do now.”  That was actually a pretty hard thing to hear from her because I had hopes for a good relationship with my mother-in-law to be.  But I believe she was wrong, not just for saying what she said but for assuming I wouldn’t like her daughter back then, no matter how different she was.  I believe I would have liked her and I also believe that eventually, she would have liked me in the way she does now.  Things take time but eventually, if you are patient, they will play out in the way they should.  I think that’s how our life has been so far and it will continue to be.

This October 2007 will be 2 years that we have been together.  I told a female friend of mine LAST year, that the only reminders I have of any time before her were my two children from my previous marriage.  This is how strong I’ve felt about being with Kelly and how strong I continue to feel.  We both used to lament the fact that we had not met earlier, not had children together earlier, not lived our lives out to the fullest together prior to meeting each other – this time around, but life is what it is and we have to move forward, from this time.  We are.