Barking Mad

Once Upon A Pen - Introduction

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.

The First Letter

Last night as I was sitting on the floor in the alcove to our bedroom sorting through paperwork that has been too long neglected in a growing pile by the filing cabinet, I came across a binder of Gareth's that once upon a time had been a crisp white plastic with shiny silver metal binder rings.  Years have yellowed the white underneath the clear plastic cover which is cracking in places, and the binder rings have become rusty in small spots.  Inside the binder were several plastic sheet protectors filled with various pieces of paper or other small mementos that he's hung onto for decades.  I was about to set it aside when I noticed a very aged piece of paper with handwriting that looked oddly familiar. 

The piece of paper had been taped together in several places and looked like it had been unfolded and refolded a million times over in the past three decades.  In the upper right hand corner of the paper was the handwritten date, "October 13, 1980, Monday."

I was looking at the very first letter I had ever written to Gareth, as a girl of 11.  The handwriting alone belies fanciful girlhood dreams, with chubby round loops that were entirely too squished together. It's a miracle he was ever able to read that very first missive and wrote back to me.  It wasn't too long after that, that I began writing in block printing...a fact I imagine Gareth, as well as my other pen-pals back then, were grateful for.

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.

click to enlarge image to full size

My cursive back then was absolutely abominable!  To be truthful, it still is, especially since most of my "writing" is done via the computer.  At least my taste in music has matured - well in my eyes it has!  I laugh when I think back to the mad crushes I had on Shawn Cassidy and each member of the Bee Gees.   I suppose I might as well admit to having wild fantasies about Andy Gibb too...

I never would have imagined, sitting there writing that very first letter 29 years ago as I listened to the soundtrack from Staying Alive, I would one day end up marrying this boy in Great Britain.  In my wildest dreams I never would have imagined - as my mother helped me prepare for my wedding, that I was getting ready to walk down the aisle into the arms of the most wonderful man to ever grace both sides of the Atlantic ocean.

I would have laughed had anyone suggested, to my 11 year old self, that one day this British boy would become my beloved and I'd place my hands in his and vow to walk through the rest of our lives, by his side.  Friends and family stood by our side and watched us exchange rings that signified more than an exchange of vows, but symbolized the long journey on a very windy and at times bumpy road toward sealing our lives together.  Under those bright blue skies, as the turquoise waters of Lake Arrowhead lapped at the sides of the boat we were married on, our long journey towards that point in our lives ended and another one began.

And to think that it all started with a silly little letter from an 11 year old full of girlish daydreams and ideas.  

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A lot of you have asked for a follow up to The Airport and I am going to begin an ongoing (probably weekly) series of the story of how Gareth and I met and the intervening years from when we started to write to one another, up until we met, that beautiful day in the airport.  Yes my luvlies, you'll get to find out if there was indeed a kiss that fateful day!  But...you'll have to wait and see.

Some of the posts in the series will be taken directly from the many journals I've kept over the years (but I'll spare you my handwriting as I've spent a great deal of the last 5 years transposing those journals onto CD), or from the actual letters we wrote back and forth.  I hope you enjoy the glimpse back into our lives.

The series begins this Friday! 

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Be sure and stay tuned for the upcoming $300 Target or WalMart gift card giveaway.  I'm not going to post exact dates yet, but it will be in time for the holiday season!