family-affair

Eighteen years ago Matt and I met.  Yep, in a bar on St. Patrick’s Day.  I was there to meet up with someone else and that guy introduced me to Matt.  I can tell you exactly what he was wearing and, unless it was out of sight, there wasn’t a stitch of green on him.  Of course he has the most beautiful green eyes. 

We were both hanging at Toes Tavern, a surf bar with locations in Santa Barbara and Redondo Beach .  The less obvious places for such a venue were in Pasadena and Canoga Park , which is where we met.  I had hoped to find some archive material online about these by-gone surfer hang-outs but, alas, the place didn’t make as big an impression on others as it did on Matt and me.  We met up there the following week when The Ventures were performing.  The theme to Hawaii 5-0 is our song.  We used to walk through the Tommy’s drive through next door to Toes (neither one of us had a car) for a greasy chili cheeseburger.  The first time we took a walk together we sang “My Girl” in perfect harmony.  That was the night we learned that Saddam Hussein was a cashier at 7-11.  Later in the relationship we would hang out at Toes on Sunday nights with Matt’s friend Tom and at 9pm we’d go sit in Tom’s car and listen to “The Doctor Demento Show,” occasionally running inside to use the pay phone (Remember those?) to call in song requests.  We saw each other almost daily but Matt would write me long letters and silly songs.  I still have all of them.  He teased me about being too young for him and called me 21.  When we had known each other for only 45 days, on my 22nd birthday, Matt asked me to marry him and gave me a beautiful garnet heart necklace and earrings that had belonged to his mother.  I told him he’d better be sober the next time he asked because I was going to say yes.  He never did ask again but I received an engagement ring 6 months later for Christmas.

I don’t think we said more than a total of 5 words to each other that first St. Patrick’s Day but there was something that drew me to him.  Perhaps it was that he took the time to notice the short redhead sitting by herself in “the surfer’s bedroom” looking at a green light bulb on the ceiling.  It might have been his laid-back ensemble: white, shredded jeans; DARE t-shirt under a threadbare white dress shirt; black and white checked bandanna tied to his front belt loops; black Members Only jacket.  Every woman’s crazy ’bout a sharp-dressed man!  Or maybe I was just crazy.  Matt was the first man to acknowledge my mind as an asset and not a threat.  Finally I was involved with a man who was my intellectual equal, if not superior.  What a turn-on!

All these years later Matt tells me that he had prayed to God a week before to send him a woman who would be good for him, who would help him to be the kind of person he wanted to be.  He considered me to be the answer to that prayer.  Wow!  No pressure.

Our beginnings may not  have seemed auspicious but how many women can say they know they are the answer to their husband’s prayers?  That is a gift I will treasure always.  Happy anniversary, Matt.  I love you.

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