October 2, 2026 – Our Origin Story

My husband and I were recently invited to an event hosted by a couple of newly-marrieds. It took place in their home. Along with my husband and me, several other couples as well as quite a few single 20-somethings and 30-somethings were in attendance. As I stood in the kitchen, after scanning the room, I quickly recognized the fact that we were the oldest people at the party. I was also able to ascertain by what I shared with others and by what others shared with me, that we had been married the longest. At one point, the male counterpart of the newly-marrieds asked, “What’s your origin story?”

I rattled it off with ease. My husband was from Colorado and I was from Washington State. We both enlisted in the Air Force and left for bootcamp shortly after high school graduation. While attending tech school to become an Aerospace Ground Equipment Specialist in Indiana, he received orders for his first assignment in Germany. Upon completion of his training, despite his airman status, he was sent to an Army post in northern Germany, arriving in December that same year. I too was assigned to the same post and arrived the following June after completing training to become a Ground Radio Repair Technician in Mississippi. And as fate would have it, we ended up sharing an adjoining wall on the 3^rd floor of a coed dorm. The rest is history.

Seems simple enough and it does give people an idea of our origin story, but there are a lot of holes in this version. A LOT. Especially when considering what transpired between the time we began to share a wall and when we actually exchanged vows and agreed to commit our lives to one another ‘til death do us part’. Because truth be told, I don’t like to discuss many of the particulars of our origin story, let alone those of our lengthy marriage, because many of the truths are hard to swallow. It’s so much easier to sum it all up by saying that we shared a wall and the rest is history. But that hardly scratches the surface.

What took place beneath the surface (when we first met) is MUCH more complicated. And I’m much to blame for most of it due to the choices I made before I even arrived at my first assignment. Had I made those choices today, I would have been eligible for a guest spot on the Jerry Springer Show or Maury Povich, but those shows didn’t exist back in 1986. If you’re familiar with those shows, you’ll probably be able to guess the predicament I found myself in. The majority of the episodes involve DNA testing and a big reveal after an envelope is carefully opened and the findings of its contents announced. But if you’re still scratching your head despite the clues, I’ll just put it out there. Plain and simple, I got knocked up. But that’s only the half of it. To my horror/shame/embarrassment, I wasn’t able to pinpoint who exactly the ‘Baby Daddy’ was.

I have to say, when I discovered I was pregnant, that was one of the lowest periods of my life. Of all the people, I couldn’t believe I’d wound up in this situation. My sister, Diabolical Debbie, with her blonde hair, green eyes, olive skin and perfect smile, was always considered the ‘pretty one’ and was never short of suitors. And she had found herself in this exact same predicament four years prior and decided to keep the child. She’d already made her fair share of bad decisions prior to getting knocked up, but this faux pas placed her squarely in the black sheep category from that point onward. My mom and stepdad never had ANYTHING good to say about her after that. But for ME to end up this way? I was supposed to be the ‘smart one’. I was the one who was part of the National Honor Society, had a vast wealth of potential and could do ANYTHING I sought to achieve.

Keeping all that in mind, how on God’s green earth did I end up doing something so incredibly dumb?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. When I went off birth control after completing tech school and then hooked up with two guys in under a week, ending up in the ‘family way’ was a foregone conclusion. Before getting myself into this mess, I’d been pretty reckless and had been looking for love in all the wrong places. Yes, despite my good grades and wealth of potential, I started going off the rails during my junior year in high school. And because of all the chaos that was taking place within my family, the fact that I had begun living on the edge went largely unnoticed. I can tell you from my own experience that if you live on the edge long enough and don’t take the possible consequences seriously, they’re bound to catch up with you. And when my husband and I first met, they firmly had a hold of me. Better yet, rather than a hold, make that a death grip.

Here’s the thing. My husband knew my circumstances when we first started dating. Since his room adjoined mine and he was just one door down the hall, he had a pretty good idea of the shenanigans taking place. I wasn’t proud of my behavior, but I was so self-destructive that I didn’t care enough to do anything about it. What is puzzling is how we even ended up together, considering how he was fully aware of my having a bun in the oven and the uncertainty over the paternity. There’s one more thing. Are you ready for this? What’s even more puzzling is that I was dating his best friend before we ended up together.

Yep. All true. And before I proceed, take a moment to process that.

Most guys, once fully briefed on all the facts, would have done a sprint in the opposite direction. Not my guy. Nope. What I have learned after being with him for four decades is that he’s the World’s Foremost Fixer. He can fix anything. Well, let me rephrase that. He can fix anything that is non-human. He can build an outdoor workshop from scratch, replace a transmission on a car, and take a motorcycle apart down to the frame and put it back together again. He can install a roof, paint a beautiful picture, design and weld together a sculpture for the front yard, or make a raised bed out of two-by-fours and corrugated steel and use it to grow a garden. He also has the ability to put in all new windows, replace the HVAC system, redo all the wiring and replace all the plumbing lines and fixtures in a single-family home (which he did in our last one). The list goes on. Truly, the man can do anything.

Well. Ok. Not everything. He’s got mad skills, but there’s one thing he’s never been able to successfully fix and that’s yours truly. And it’s not as if he hasn’t tried.

The thing is, as much as I’ve built him up, he’s got plenty of his own flaws.

Had I had the slightest notion of what it would be like to be married to an alcoholic, it’s highly doubtful that there ever would have been a wedding. And it’s not as if he hid his addiction from me. It was nearly as obvious as my growing belly.

But when you love someone as much as we loved each other, there’s a tendency to overlook things.

I overlooked his shortcomings and he did the same. I do have to note that at that particular time, my shortcomings were met with disgust and ridicule. I became a social pariah and was called a slut and a whore and in order to maintain my sanity and what little remained of my self-respect, resorted to moving out of the dorm and into my own apartment off-site, while his behavior (drinking himself into a stupor night-after-merciless-night and waking up on the floor the following morning at the base of a toilet in the nearest bathroom stall) was glorified. It makes no sense but there you are. That’s what it was like in the mid-80s. I find it curious how those who engage in certain destructive behaviors are held in high esteem and are often referred to as ‘the life of the party’, while the status of others who engage in less socially acceptable destructive behaviors is reduced to that of what you may have accidently stepped in moments before and must now remove from the bottom of your shoe. What’s rather sad is that I don’t necessarily think much has changed since then, at least in that regard.

Nevertheless, those are the reasons why I feel it best to keep our origin story rather brief and avoid getting into the weeds. Can you imagine what we’d be faced with if I shared the whole truth and nothing but the truth at a dinner party with people whom I’d/we’d just met? I’d have to wear galoshes and a raincoat (with a hood) to navigate the sh*t storm of judgement, shame and/or pity which would undoubtedly follow. Good grief! No thanks!!

And as it generally goes when I start to write about any given topic, there’s so much more to share and I could literally go on for days; however, I made a promise to keep my posts to a minimum, and am choosing to keep my promise. Therefore, I must bid you adieu.

Peace, love and blessings to you and yours.

Until we meet again…