12/21/01
This past weekend marked the most significant anniversary for Tom and me. It was 2 years ago at this time that we each determined - virtually simultaneously - that we were in love. What brings an understanding smile to our lips, is that this occurred with over 2000 miles between us and with only 1 telephone conversation and numerous email exchanges.
About 6 weeks before, I had begun, with Tom's long distance assistance, to solve a facility problem in a separate life-extension field. (We had "interviewed" each other briefly by phone before I agreed to take on the project - our only conversation till after our "discovery".) My growing questions about the history of the situation and people involved eventually unleashed a torrent of emotion, much of it painful. This quickly lead to long email exchanges on philosophy and its branches of ethics and politics. Tom had studied at considerable depth, subjects I had explored but with less understanding. While we both read Ayn Rand for the first time in 1961, I was 16 and awestruck. Tom meanwhile was 23 and stimulated to do much more reading of preceding and contemporary philosophers. His questioning probing manner of learning lead to the development for him of a non-coercive free-market philosophy that he began to explain to me during this period. And he liked to dance!
My admiration for Tom and extreme pleasure in communicating with him daily on first, business, intellectual and finally personal subjects, evolved within 2 weeks to a love I'd not experienced before. I knew that I valued our newly blossomed relationship at least as much as those I'd had for years (and within a few months acknowledged that it exceeded all others). Tom told me in email and then by phone that after 30 years of relationship famine, he was sure that I was the woman he'd only wondered whether he'd ever meet. (I did send Tom a photo file about this time and I had access to photos of him, therefore we knew that each was visually acceptable to the other.)
This weekend at the cottage (despite the "problems" mentioned in the previous entry) we indulged our romantic natures more than usual. Without the beckoning calls of our computers, we were free to dance to romantic slow old melodies and lively disco favorites. We enjoyed another long walk on old trails Tom recalled from his early years in "the park". We "crowded" each other in the kitchen as we prepared meals and joked about "getting in each other's way". We kept each other warm in the cool of the cottage with love as passionate as our first physical meeting in January 2000.
Yes, it was a most pleasurable weekend recollecting a momentous period for both of us. But just as we've recalled before that time 2 years ago, we'll do so frequently again. Love is not just for the young in years; it is the expression of the highest value one finds in another. This Tom and I have for each other and can envision no reason why it should ever change. Maybe one of our "slow" days at the computers, we'll look back at Tom's folder of our emails and reminisce over the contents of those first few months.
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