In 1984, me, my mom and my three younger siblings pulled into the small mountain town of La Veta, Colorado and made it our home for a time. Little did I know that a pair of modest dark pink shorts would lead me to meet my future husband, Jimmy Valdez. He found a way to meet the new girl in town who preferred to don bright colors and didn't mind swinging a 4-foot-long dead snake through the air. What was he thinking? But that's how the big romance began: he liked the way I wore them shorts, and I liked the way his 501's wore him!
We 'dated' briefly. I recall a double-date with my sister and her beau at the time to the drive-in movie for an Indiana Jones flick; the one with the monkey brains served from their heads. My glasses were broken and my two brothers sat atop the truck cab with their legs dangling in the windshield: I can't recall much about the rest of the show. Around my neck on a long silver chain rested Jimmy's class ring; it attended John Mall High School with me in Walsenburg, CO during the first month of 9th grade. I penned dozens of love poems to him and read them to my girlfriends. But, alas, we eventually parted ways. Long-distance romance and age difference too difficult to handle. While he continued on with college and football and his family and social life, I headed north to Alaska. And then on to a wee country called Israel where I beheld the Sea of Galilee by moonlight, experienced Jerusalem, and stayed and worked on a moshav by the Golan Heights.
When I returned to America, I finished my high school years at Livingston High in Livingston, CA, living first with my Uncle Sonny & Aunt Edyne and then my Grandma Opal. Upon graduating, fear of the unknown led me to ditch a full-ride college scholarship to UC Santa Cruz and head to the one state where I still knew someone from my nomadic past: Colorado and Laurie Geiser, cousin to one Jimmy Valdez. I hadn't been in touch with him since leaving 4 years earlier, but who was sitting in the living room of the apartment Laur shared with her sister but my future husband? Even more handsome and quiet than before. And capable of tongue-tying me with just a look. I won't even try to describe what his longer-than-necessary handshake did to me. It would take a couple of months before we would bridge the chemistry between us and begin the dating process officially. But we did. The All-American boy and the rather odd gypsy-for-Jesus girl.
There was nothing easy about those first years of marriage. We got it all backward. We rather grew up together. We didn't begin as best friends but instead eased into a partnership and friendship in between raising babies and learning just how very different we were. And our life as husband and wife didn't play out on some deserted island but in the midst of two large, loud and strong-willed families. There was no fairy tale. What there was we'll call good old-fashioned real life. Often hard and fast. Sometimes the effort to hang on was 80% - 20% in MY court; other times 10% - 90% in HIS court. That 50/50 thing is NOT a rule. When it seemed WE had our act together, actions on the periphery would reverberate in our world and knock us about. Just in my family alone there was enough beyond-the-pale, truly earth-shattering, uncomfortable-to-say-the-very-least 'stuff' to scare off a good man. It was at those times that my eyes would open wider to the true character of my Jimmy and humble me. And I'm quite confident that if you asked him, he would express the same sentiment.
Reflecting upon 26 years together -- and Jimmy is the spouse who has had to remind the other of the date and actual anniversary year -- there are mornings where I wake up and look at my man and feel like we are two battered prizefighters the day after a championship match in which the outcome was a draw and we chose to surrender and share the heavy belt, each of us holding up one end high over our heads in the most Rocky-esque of ways. But we fought, and are fighting, the good fight. Not one against the other any longer but against the outside forces which would seek to come between us. THAT is our reward. Real life has not stopped in its barrage. But real life has also not stopped in the reaping of rewards. Rewards which emerge through surviving and thriving. A trio of children who giggle AT us and WITH us. A continued physical and emotional attraction, and a deep affection, between us as husband and wife. Both of us seeking Christ together in our imperfect human ways. It's a toss-up as to who makes the other laugh harder (though last night I think I earned the point). We feel incredibly comfortable with one another but still find ways to surprise. And the stable of nicknames Jimmy has trotted out for me over the span of 2 1/2+ decades reveal just how much he thinks of me.
The sense of pride which accompanies my anniversaries as the years pile on stems from the truth of marriage and not the dream. Marriage takes effort. Marriage is work. And like any job well done, there is satisfaction and pleasure to show for it. I've no wish to repeat anything. No request for a do-over. Whatever mistakes were made, and those won't be tallied on my finger and toes, it's how we reacted, revived and recovered. Jimmy and I could be a divorce statistic. We came close a few times. I'm glad we had the support and stubbornness to bounce back. Because most mornings, I wake up and gaze at my prizefighter . . . and I just wanna kiss him until he can't breathe!!!
Happy 26th Anniversary, my Jimmy-Jimmers-Jimbo. Your 'Dolly' loves you in ways she couldn't begin to understand, much less imagine, all those many years ago.
Thanks for rescuing me, my love. I hope I've rescued you right back.
