I Am A Romantic Legend In My Own Mind

Spring is the time that we are all supposed to start thinking about love and all that other

romantic stuff. I, of course, am extremely romantic all year round. At least I think I am.

Others, including the person who has been on the receiving end of my romantic overtures for the past thirty-some years, tend to raise their eyebrows at that thought. For some reason, I am not what comes to mind when they think of a hunk of burning love.

They do say that I'm a big hunk of something, though. Diane and I met in the late Sixties, but it wasn't until 1971 that we actually started dating. Our first date was September eleventh of that year. Now Al Qaeda has gone and stolen that date from us. It's hard to say you are going to celebrate anything on September eleventh.

It was an incredibly romantic event. I arranged to meet her in a hot spot.You have to remember that we were both in high school at the time, so the only hot spot that fit the budget was the laundry room of the apartments our families lived in at the time.

After that, we were virtually inseparable. When people saw one of us, they also saw the other. People laughed at the twelve-inch difference in our heights as we walked along together. It was the only way they could tell that we weren't joined at the hips.

My hips were roughly parallel with her biceps.

That difference is just as pronounced today. I may be big for my age, but Diane is still short for hers.

I was thinking about those early days recently. My youngest son, Brad has been dating the same girl for several years. He and Deb, like Diane and I before them, would be joined at the hip if it weren't for the height difference.

And that's a good thing. Deb has become a big part of our family.

When Brad was about to enter this world, a nurse asked me if he was our first. I said, "No. He's our last." As a result, Diane and I never had the opportunity to have a daughter. Two children were enough. I can't imagine the effect on our financial instability if we'd had to feed more than that.

Still, we missed a lot by not having a daughter. I watched friends and family go through the joys and stresses of raising girls, and came to realize that it was a very different experience to what we were going through with two boys. It wasn't better or worse, just different.

The four of us were heading across the border into Washington State a few days ago. The Customs officer at the border looked at our identification and then asked about the relationship between the three Kirklands in the car and the one MacKenzie. Brad summed it up in just one word.

"Yes!" he said emphatically.

The officer understood the relationship immediately. No further explanation was necessary. He was happy with Brad's response. Deb was especially happy with Brad's response.

Obviously, he gets that romantic stuff from me.

They are about to head out on a post-university graduation adventure; leaving in a couple of weeks for a six-week tour through Europe to celebrate surviving their undergraduate studies. They've saved diligently for the trip. Deb's father is giving them the airline tickets for graduation gifts and we are giving them Eurorail passes. They'll stay in hostels in France, Italy, Greece, England, Ireland and several other points in between.

Diane and I will be taking the trip vicariously. It's always something we wished we had done, but life got in the way and we kept postponing it. We've now postponed it for nearly thirty-three years. Historic sites that Brad and Deb will be seeing on their travels were new when Diane and I might have made the trip.

Being the romantic that I am, I'll remind Diane that we might not have had six-weeks in Europe, but it doesn't beat evening in a hot laundry room.

And if that doesn't prove that I'm a big old hunk of burning love, I just don't know what will.

2006, Gordon Kirkland