Yesterday in my Friday 5, I didn't get a chance to report my most important FIVE.

FIVE years ago this weekend, MOTH and I made a very important commitment to each other. How time flies.

He was selling and moving out of his house after a year being divorced. We had chatted online and met once for coffee a few weeks earlier. He invited me to come down and help him move, and I felt compelled to do so. Things at home were teetering and I was so confused and frightened. I was 4 years into my second marriage with jackass. And I had realized what horrible tragic mistake I'd made. I was married to a raging alcoholic, and emotional abuser, and I had to make a difficult choice.

I had committed before my friends and family, and most importantly my children, that we would be married "until parted by death." NOW what? How much was I supposed to endure, at what point was I giving the message to my kids that marriages and vows are disposable? I had ended the marriage to their father because I didn't want them to look at that marriage and settle for the same. And here I was, risking the same damn thing again!

He pretty much took the decision out of my hands when his critical nature turned on my kids. Beat me if you must, but don't go near my kids if you value your limbs.

I turned to the internet more than ever at that time, and I was invited to "talk to me, little one" buy a stranger with whom I felt immediately safe. We chatted on line, we arranged for a safe friendly meeting in a public place for coffee, and a month later I dropped the kids off at their dad's and went off to help him move. And yes, I was still married, and yes, I told the jackass where I was going, and yes, he HAD to know that things were in a nose-dive here.

It was a wonderful weekend. We talked til all hours, he got called into work a midnight shift, so I went with and napped while he worked. And Sunday morning, before I left to go "home" we took an early morning walk.

It had rained during the night. The streets were quiet, the town was still asleep. We didn't talk much. We stopped briefly under a huge tree with low hanging limbs. He chuckled at how I could stand up straight under the tree without my head touching the wet leaves. He reached up and shook one of the limbs with doused me with raindrops. I laughed and as I wiped the wetness from my face, I saw a worried and almost painful look cross his face.

He told me, in a shaken voice, that some 60+ years earlier, his father had stood under that same tree and shook a damp limb all over his sweetheart. And the two began their forever right there.

Just as we did.

We had no way of knowing that we'd fall in love, or cripes, get married. We just each needed a friend at that time, and we each found one. As the following year unfolded (BOY how it unfolded), MOTH was there to listen, to wipe my tears, make me laugh. And what was just as important was that I was there for him in the same way. Neither of us gave without receiving, and it was an easy and natural exchange. We spent two years having morning breakfast and coffee on-line with the web cam in between 200 mile visits. Finally he was able to make the move here...and then the move down the aisle.

Yikes.

We laugh now, because 5 years ago, he gave me a band of gold to wear around my neck. It was his way of affirming that we'd be special to each other "forever." Yeah, we knew or THOUGHT we knew that "forever" was in store for us. We had no idea. We really didn't. I am so grateful and happy that we've grown together, and I thank God for every day that we have together in our forever. It took me 40+ years and a LOT of mistakes and heartache to get it right. But I did.

I love You, MOTH.

Forever.

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