It Only Takes a Minute....

I love love. Is there any more wondrous event in life than finding another person to share your future? When this happens, it is truly nothing less than a miracle. Think about it. Six billion people in the world and you find The One who is meant to be your life partner. Amazing that this happens at all. Even more amazing is that finding and falling in love with "The Right One" happens as often as it does. This is my story:

Once in a while, we make a decision that changes the direction of our lives forever. And sometimes, we rescind that decision in a mistaken belief that we made the wrong decision in the first place.

Four years after I finished my degree, I had the opportunity to attend a week long Welsh language course — an interest I had developed during my post-graduate trip to the British Isles. A month before the course began, I changed my mind because I’m not good at learning languages and, after all, it was a whim. I requested a refund. With some reluctance, Cymdeithas Madog agreed to return the small fee.

One morning, a week later, while I read the Sunday paper, I realized that I had probably shut the door on an experience I might find useful in the future. I intended to write about my visit to Wales, and a knowledge of the language was always a good thing.

I canceled my cancellation, knowing that my reputation with the Cymdeithas was now tainted.
The course began in the first week of August. My first indication that I had made the right decision to return my whimsical pursuit of learning Welsh when, on the opening introductory evening, my attention was drawn to one of the name cards of someone who had not yet arrived — one of the course tutors.

His last name was the same as a writer I had studied on my course, but his first name looked French — an added intrigue.

I returned to following morning to attend the first day of the course. That enchanted morning, across a crowded room, sat a man with a guitar. I stared at him. He glanced at me.

Thankfully, I was assigned to another tutor and that evening I had a chance to meet this Welsh-speaking guitarist on less shaky ground at an external, related event. I, the Big City girl, and he, the charming innocent from the market town in the county made famous by the Lord Rhys, gravitated to each other as though we knew from the minute we glimpsed one another we were meant to be together.

I learned much more Welsh in that week than the course could have promised. Though we were discreet, my follow learners and his fellow tutors knew we were crazy about one another. Parting at the end of the course was dreadful. He had to go on to visit friends in Maryland where he had attended the Conservatory of Music and I had to return to my job as graduate liaison officer at my former university. We made promises to write, certain never to meet again.

I wrote my first of many letters to him that night. Twenty-four long, dreary hours passed. On the third day of our separation, he phoned — as he promised he would. He was miserable in Maryland. I was thrilled he wanted to come back to spend another week in San Francisco.


Over burgers and milkshakes at Great America, he told me he wanted four children and I accepted his proposal. Crazy as it seems, we have now been soul mates and best friends, partners and parents of three (reality did kick in eventually!) for 32 years.