Life's Path, Life's Choices, All's Well That Ends Well

I'd like to talk about my 'marriage' forty years ago this week. At the time I was twenty, a student at a prestigious college enrolled in the journalism department. I was a foreign student at the time. My uncle, the patriarch of the family arrived in Chicago and without notice dropped in on me. I shared an apartment with my then sweetheart, a girl from Connecticut. He invaded our space and determined we were sharing a life together and forced my confession. A week later my mother and aunt arrived and I was returned to my country.

My uncle talked to me, with my mother present. What I did with a lover he didn't care about, but every member of the family had a duty to have children. He had a friend, a business friend who was looking for a wife, and a wife who was your enough to have children. And I needed to think about what I was going to do.

I married an American to get back to the USA, finished my degree at a small state college, had three children, and have lived in Virginia for the last 35 years.

My college girlfriend's path was marriage and divorce and she lives near me. We are closer than ever, she has two children. We have spent the last twenty years sharing every Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sometimes when we are alone we find peace in an embrace in each other's arms.