Welcome To The Greatest Love Story Ever Told
Melissa at Sunset
(Kathleen&Geo's Wedding) Longing: An Image that's how i'll remember her. standing there in front of a double bay window. a wine glass in her right hand. those stained- glass eyes holding back an army of tears. a gentle sigh pulling her shoulders taut and slowly letting them go. and could this be the greatest love story ever told? just her and i standing side- by-side looking out over a vast ocean; never saying a single word? it may well be, because whenever i close my eyes to make the world disappear that's how i picture her. just standing there. next to me. and i won't presume to say a single word of how she glided into the room as if on a cloud. i can't. to be honest, i don't remember when or how she happened to come into my life. for all i know she's been there all along. -cfn |
Where should I start? I guess the beginning would be nice, but people would expect that. I think I'll start around 2 and a half years ago (1999). I mean that's when I finally met Melissa and I guess that's what got the ball rolling on all the events in my life which somehow led to me moving to Massachusetts.
OK. So Melissa and I planned a trip for people from my old company (New York Life Investment Management) to come up to Boston and catch a baseball game with people from her company (Boston Financial Data Services). I actually came up a day earlier than everyone else so I could spend some extra time getting to know this woman who I'd dealt with over the phone for the preceeding 4 or 5 months. Anyway she met me at the train station. We ate lunch,had a few drinks, and saw the Bare Naked Ladies in concert. That was day one. Day two was spent exploring the city of Boston. We shopped on Newberry Street. Walked through the Public Gardens and stood outside of 'Cheers.' Somewhere along the way we stopped by a little church and had ourselves a 'good sit.' We even kicked off our shoes and soaked our feet in a fountain. What a great day, and it wasn't even over yet! Well, as with most stories worth listening to, this one includes a hurdle for our heroes to overcome. I won't get into it in any details, for those of you who know Melissa and I are probably familiar with the issue we had to deal with that first night (and actually the rest of the weekend). But once I got back to Jersey we kept in touch and eventaully decided that our mutual attraction was so strong that we should try the long distance thing. So she came down to visit me and I went up to visit her and we tried to make our weekends together last as long as we could. It didn't take either of us very long to realize that we needed to see and be with each other on a daily basis. And that, in a nutshell, is how I ended up in Boston (a suburb on the South Shore to be exact). |