I have been tossing around the idea of starting a mini-series (although, knowing me and how verbose I am, it's likely to not be so "mini" once I get going!), about how Gareth and I came to be known as The Brit and the Twit husband and wife...especially with him being from the United Kingdom and me being a Yankee. Most of my 8 or 9 readers know that he and I started out as pen-pals long ago. Our schools were matched up via an international scholastic pen-pal service and Gareth and I were partnered with one another. What was so unique about this was the fact that most of the time the children were to be paired with someone of the same sex. I'd had pen-pals prior to Gareth, who were from Norway, Sweden, Australia and eventually New Zealand and all were females. I think it was a lucky turn of fate that Gareth and I were matched up!
I'm still in the process of trying to find our letters from all those years ago. I was almost 12 and he was 14 when we started exchanging letters. I fear that the bulk of all of his letters to me may have been lost when the friend's basement I had them stored in, flooded. We're pretty sure all of my letters to him still remain in the garage back in Maine and hopefully time, humidity and mice haven't destroyed them!
I did however find the very first letter that I ever wrote to him, almost 30 years ago. Despite it's tattered and discolored state I was able to scan it in, and last year I posted the image of that very first letter, and wrote a little bit about it.
"...I'm feeling very nostalgic and thought I'd share the letter with you. I've scanned it in, so that I have a permanent copy of it, always. If anyone out there knows anything about preserving paper, I'd love your ideas or suggestions. This is definitely something we want to hang onto and give to Gaby one of these days..." Read more and see the letter itself.
Prior to posting about the very first letter, I wrote about the first time Gareth and I had ever met in person. I took most of the post directly from a journal that I had kept at the time. For some reason I wrote that entry in third person. To this day I don't recall why I did.
I wrote about the entire experience of going to the airport and waiting for Gareth's flight to arrive, obsessing over how I looked and wondering if he'd kiss me...
"...She reached into the side pocket of her purse to pull out a copy of the email he'd sent her with his flight details. She searched around her for a screen with arrival information and easily found his flight. Originally his flight was due in at 4:12PM and now it was arriving at 4:19PM. She counted herself lucky that she had seven extra minutes to make sure she looked her best. Walking towards the escalator they had earlier agreed to meet near, she found the comfy black leather chairs and sat down. She immediately stood up again when she realized she hadn't straightened out her skirt before sitting. Now, seated again, she rummaged through her purse for her compact. She glanced at her cell phone to check the time. 4:09PM. Allowing time for him to deplane (he'd already gone through Customs in Newark and had texted her to let her know he'd arrived safely in the U.S.), and reach the top of the escalator, she calculated she had about twenty minutes..." Read more about our first meeting at The Airport.
When I orginally posted The Airport, the feedback I received was wonderful and a lot of people asked me to post more about our story. I had intended to create a series back then, but as so often happens, life started to move at a million miles an hour, Gareth lost his job, Meg left for boot camp with the USAF, Matt came to live with us and we moved to New York. I never got around to posting anything more about it.
Well, now I think I'm ready to sit down and write the entire story. I'm just not sure where to begin? I was thinking of sort of summarizing our first 8 years of writing to one another, and then moving on, in more detail from there. That's just one idea I have been mulling over. Without all of our letters though, that might be hard. I'm crushed that most of his letters to me were destroyed via my own carelessness in leaving them with someone and never going back for them. I also lost all of my archery equipment, medals I'd won, and several other sentimental belongings. In spite of my stupidity, at the end of the day, I do have the ultimate prize...Gareth.
Seeing as how so many people wanted to know about whether there was indeed a "first kiss" at the airport, or not, I'll post about that, next week. At some point I'll even put a link up on the top bar for all of the posts that are included in "Once Upon a Pen."
Looking back it's kind of amusing when I think about what Gareth told me during our first week together...he said that he always knew we'd end up together, he was just waiting for me to realize it. I guess our story, from my point of view anyhow, is that Prince Charming is for real, and in my case, he was patient enough to wait for me to stop kissing toads and realize he had been standing there the entire time.
