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Monday, March 26, 2007
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BY DIVINE APPOINTMENT

IT'S A LONG STORY BUT WORTH IT.  FOR YOU, CAROLYN AND THANK YOU.  AND THIS IS "JUST" MY SIDE OF THE STORY.

I was not allowed to date until I was 18 years old.  That did not stop me from liking some boys on that road to my 18th birthday.  I was an obedient daughter.  It's a long story and apart from the meat of this posting,  I forfeited a full scholarship to St. John's U. in Queens, NY, to go to business.  I'd promised myself that I would get that education on my own nickel but I wanted to work first.  I was 17 years old when I graduated from H.S.  I worked on Fulton Street in NYC as a legal secretary and met so many people my own age.  That October a new girl came to work in my office and we became fast friends.  My birthday had been in July and I became a legal adult according to the law.  The framework of my homelife was still the child/parent relationship....and I do mean  c h i l d.  My mother especially could NOT see me as having matured into young womanhood...and that was more sad than words could describe. 

My new girlfriend asked me if I wanted to go to a Thanksgiving Day dance at the Army Pictorial Center, in Astoria, Queens.  I immediately said YES...all I heard was dance and failed at hearing the following question..."do you want to be with a blind date?"  To this I automatically answered with the affirmative, as well.  On the subway home that evening, I gave it serious thought.  I'd never been out on a real date before and why had I responded so immediately?  Oh well, thought I...it will be a nice experience....and besides...this would be a terrific way to step into "datehood" for the first time.  I was always "positive."

I'd planned to stay overnight and on Friday, November 16th, 1962 I entered the NCO club with my friend, her boyfriend and me.  It was an evening to remember and I did for many, many years.  There Jim stood as I approached the table.  His hand extended as we were introduced.  He was shy, well dressed in a sports coat, shirt and tie, a crease down his trousers like a knife blade and shoes that were spit shined.  Thought I....he is adorable....and he was good looking too.  Many, many years later he confessed to me that when he saw me, he told himself that I was the "one."  Sometime in April, on a buggy ride through Central Park, we professed our love for each other.  My dad knew I had fallen in love and although my mom knew it too, she rejected it.  She said I had no dating experience and that I was too young.  That was the beginning of the end.

Jim and I had a most decent relationship in spite of the moral world crumbling around us in those turbulent 60's.  Jim's stint in the Army would be complete in October, 1963 and we planned.  He would go back home, establish himself in a good job and our goal was to save $5,000.  We could do this.  We planned this...but it would be the first of many plans where life got in the way.  Mom was a total autocrat.  She made my life miserable and when she forbade me to see Jim anymore, I resorted to sneaking out.  Before I'd begun to date, she told my sister and I that if we ever met a man who had a fraction of the integrity and virtue my dad possessed, not to let him slip through our fingers.  Meanwhile, she was ripping Jim from my life...and he was a replica of dad. 

My dad was a mild, decent, integral man of wonderful character and Jim was no different.  I'd fallen in love with my soul mate, despite my tender age of 18, as he did with me and despite his tender age of 24.  The last time I saw my beloved was  October 6th, on an unusually mild Autumn evening.  We tearfully embraced in public and amidst the rush of people coming up from the subways on Flatbush and Nostrand Avenues in Brooklyn, NY.  We were saying good bye and little did we think then, it would be for 39 years we would not see each other again.  Mother saw to that.

It is far too detailed a story to get into, but the last three months that Jim courted me HAD to be covert.  I really didn't know then, I had my own life and that even God expected me to make decisions in it....not mother!  My brother, sister and I all experienced the same thing when it came to choosing our life's partners.  Mother, or our perception of her, had changed dramatically.  We, as her children, remained dutiful, respectful of "her" wishes (most of the time) and it depressed our lives.  It wasn't until the later part of her life, when she was old and senile that her doctor informed us she suffered from a rare form of dementia which "probably" began in her early thirties, if not earlier.  At last, we had a definitive answer to why she was so autocratic and obdurate.  Dad loved her dearly as I know she did him BUT his life had to have been a certain HELL.  We NEVER surmised that...until they both had died.

While cleaning out the home she had spent her last years in, I'd found some letters, bound in a sheet of paper which had turned yellow from the years.  Mother saved EVERYTHING.  Every card, every letter and every memento she'd ever received.  However, I was to learn that day, those bound letters had not been mailed to her.  I'd hesitated about opening them because I was weary with having read so many letters I had once sent her.  I was going to toss them..unopened...but something prompted me to read them.  There were three...and they were addressed to Jim.  My God, she had the letters I put in the box for the mailman...so many years ago.  My heart ached so much I had difficulty breathing.  I remember looking up and yelling into the air..."if you weren't dead mom, I'd kill you myself."  I'd instantly began to relive the sequence of events which immediately followed Jim's departure, from the Army... and from my life.

I'd come home from work on a cold November evening.  I had already been depressed about the matters of my life and wondered why Jim had not responded to my first letter.  Wasn't he anxious as I?  I told myself I would NOT write again too soon if I did not hear from him.  There, in front of the home I'd grown up in was a For Sale sign.  We were moving?  How could that be?   And why wasn't that shared with us?  Although dad and mom had discussed a "possible" move at sometime in the future, dad was as surprised as the three of us were.

(So sorry, I will continue this tonight or tomorrow.  I must be about the promises I made myself.  First things first.  Let me know if you want to read anymore, as well.  No use in wasting time on the story of "us" if no one wants to know the beautiful end.  Right?)

Okay, I am back...gardening has to be postponed until the weather clears up.  So...continuing..

My sister Marie graduated from HS on June 22nd and we were moving to Rutland, Vt. the very next day.  We were taken away from all that was familiar to us.  Dad had given up a wonderful job and, sadly, never worked again.  Mother the martyr that she was, began nursing again...we had to have some kind of an income and although she would never admit to having wrought upon her entire family, by way of a vagary of hers, was the depression in the lives of her entire family (and I think, herself as well.)  My brother immediately went into the Navy as a CO...and he never came home again.  I met and married a man I "thought" I loved but he went out for a pack of cigarette one day when my son was 2 1/2 and my daughter was 6 months and didn't see him again until the children were in their teens.  My sister dove into her cosmetology books, got her license and got her own apartment.  My family had disintegrated in one felt swoop.  However, I got a little ahead of myself. 

I wrote Jim again, giving him my new address in Vt.  I had been shaking with unsureness as I placed the letter in the mail box in front of our new home.  I did not want to make a fool of myself, if I hadn't already.  I half expected a reply...this time.  And then, while I waited, I met the man I would marry.  There had been "red" flags about him, but I ignored them, foolishly.  I had not been thinking rationally.  Mother would NEVER interfere in my life again...and I vowed that.  It was a 6 month whirl wind courtship, from the day I met him to the day of marriage.  About five weeks before we married, I put my last and final letter in the mail box, telling Jim of my intentions and if he only said the word, I would turn my back on everything...just to be with him again.   He never contacted me, (and there is an explanation for that.)  So, I married a man I thought I loved, and I do take full responsibility for it.... and as I walked up the isle I told myself...Jim should be standing there.  Not a good way to start off, is it?

During our plan making, and because of my mother's adamancy in my continuing association with Jim, we designed that all contact from Jim to me would be made to my girlfriend's address.  Good plan?  Not!  She had left home shortly after I moved, in pursuit of an airline stewardess career.  Stopped by infrequently at her home because her flights took her all over the world.  When she did get home, there was a pile of mail to me....from Jim, not to mention about 100 phone messages.  He would not DARE use my new address because he didn't want to cause me flack with my mom.  And he knew it would!  So, he "waited" also.  She had gotten home just in time to get to Vt......for my WEDDING!  She took it upon herself as being "prudent" not to mention Jim's correspondence to me...the day before my marriage.  However, she did "mention" it when I was seven months pregnant, by a slip of the tongue.  Oh! My Good God in Heaven!   It was so late and already the strain of my husband taking on the responsibility of being a father was NOT one of his most cherished thoughts.  I was fertile ground and we made yet, another child.

I never thought of my children as a burden....they were my purpose.  When my husband left us, I'd thought I had gone from my mother's home to this...from the fire to the apex of the fire pit.  God brought me to it and He would bring me from it and it was the longest lesson of my life.  I had no job and my husband had a warped philosophy: he would never be rich so....charge everything in sight...get what you want NOW and pay it off the rest of your life.  I was also left with paying off the creditors...which I did...but not without paying a price.  I had to move back home and at that time, my parents were planning to move back to NY.   Oh!   Happy day!!  I knew mother would attempt to place me under her thumb, once again and I truly struggled to keep my vow...but I was needy then.  I'd predicated their purchase of a new home with a statement I would move out, asap, once I established myself.  Please!  Don't buy a big home.  I would sleep in a basement with the children...I did not care.  Well, need I write that mother had her way, once again, and they purchased a 13 room home.  Dad was against it.  What about the increased mortgage?  The taxes?  He had no job or future in getting one.  Dad had grown to a beaten man and although mother was aware of this....she said that she would take care of EVERYTHING.  And she did!   I was put on the guilt trip of a life time and felt pressured to stay where I did NOT want to anymore.  The sage, "you can never go back home" hit me like a ton of bricks.  Ahh!  I finally understood the implications of that remark.

I'd gotten a job in a little Jewish summer resort, directly after the move.  I made $11.13 per week for 60 hours of work BUT my tips for the ten weeks were over $3,500.  After that summer, I bought a Volkswagen Bug and started up a small business, Maid to Order.  It flourished.  By word of mouth, my business grew and I earned between $800 to $1,100 per WEEK!  Of course, I cleaned three homes a day, six days a week.  Some of my customers preferred alternate weeks, so on those weeks I had that extra time, I cleaned an office building.  It was honest work which paid me handsomely and I was willing and exceptional.  As the economy increased, so did my charge.  I was set to go and after spending nearly two tentative years with my parents, I HAD to go, although I felt I was escaping..much like a prisoner  must feel when he is set FREE!

Dad and mom were my babysitters....very loving grandparents!  I could see the "old" mom when she was around her dearly loved grandchildren...and during that time I was with her, unfortunately, she usurped my authority.  My children, in turn, loved their grandma and pa, however, they preferred grandpa, much like their mother before them.  They began to call me GraceAnn in a rather uncanny, authoritative voice...THAT WAS IT!!!!  They treated me more like a peer than a parent and I had to leave.  I saw the pain in both their eyes, especially my father's.  But HE understood, completely.  I found an apartment and moved into it in short order.  I had some women who had just begun to work with me and they took over for the duration.  My sister moved back to NY and we lived together.  No...she too would never again live with mom.  She often said it was merely an existence..not a life.  I agreed.

My parents moved to Florida shortly after I moved out and again, I saw the pain in my dad's face...but he was also looking forward to a simpler life.  My first marriage was annulled, despite the children born of said marriage.  I worked seven long and arduous years.  My children tell me "today" they never recall a meal I didn't prepare and that I wasn't there for.  That they remember I bathed them every night of their young lives and always heard their prayers.  They tell me now, life with me was an adventure and my son extols me as the benchmark of motherhood.  And...I don't know how I did it....but I did it!

I never dated, although once in a rare while, my sister and I stepped out and danced to our heart's content.  Another girlfriend, from childhood days moved into the area and we continued where we left off, as friends.  She felt only empathy for me....always did...but that's another story.  One day she said, "have I got a guy for you!!"  I reluctantly met him and was impressed only with his apparent shyness...but he had his ways, I must admit.  He told me four hours after our introduction...he was going to marry me.  I laughed and told him that for a man 16 years my senior he was a silly person to make that statement.  Six months later...again I married... Nick.  I'd told him from the beginning that I felt comfortable with him but never wanted to marry again.  I rolled with the punches and he said, when he presented me with a 3 carat diamond, he had enough love for the both of us.  I was nearly 31 and he was fast approaching his 47th birthday.  He understood that a part of me was dead.  He often would ask me about "why" that was so, but I kept that a secret from him, right from the beginning.  The ring was beautiful, big and obnoxious...not my style at all.  I am into serious subtlety, like the little black dress.  Despite the gross differences between us, I knew he was a decent, sincere man however, we did argue so much about how to raise children.  Mine turned out super...and his...well it does not bear repeating.  Nick died on March 9th, 2001 after a very long and debilitaing battle with heart disease.  I was at his side all the way.  He told me, just before his journey back Home that he wanted me to reach for the brass ring and that perhaps that dead part of me would experience new life.  He was telling me he had always known that there was a part of my heart that belonged to another...and he never knew his name.  He said, inspite of all the difficult times that he caused me...he loved me intensely and asked my forgiveness.  It was a momenteous time in Nick's life...and it was in his dying that he realized that I was an uprighteous woman who had never been truly recognized by him...until then.  I'd told him that long before he asked forgiveness, I'd already given it to him. 

I buried him in a little cemetery in Harriman, NY, next to his deceased wife.  There had been so many people present, including the Marines, in full dress, honoring him with their final salute.  It was a frigidly cold March day but spanking with bright sunshine.  I'd lost a good friend to death.  I left the cemetery and returned when all was gone to visit him one last time.  I'd said my final adeu, cried and prayed he had found friendship in Christ as he made his way to judgement.  I dried my eyes and the sun still shone so brightly, it was blinding me.  I turned on my heel and never looked back again.  It was fate accompli.

In February of the next year I'd gone to visit my daughter for several months.  My eldest granddaughter had established an email address for me and was teaching me how to use a computer.  "Grand ma" said Kim, do you want to enroll on Classmates.com.  Oh! why not, so I did.  I was as dumb as a rock and still maintain that stand about technology, but Kim would walk me through it until I just got fed up.  HOWEVER, when she and I went to an overstuffed email box, I was absolutely delighted.  For the most part...it was junk mail and told her to delete after having opened up several dozen of them.  "No grandma" you sent some emails to your friends in NC and they may be well down the way.  We will check and see!"  Email after email went by and I didn't recognize anyone.....UNTIL we came across the name...jisenhart.  "Go back" I squeaked to Kim..."go back."  She became alarmed suddenly BECAUSE I had a smile upon my face so wide that she said she hadn't seen me smile in so long.  "Who is this?" said she to me.  I could not even speak.  Tears flooded my face...they were tears of such indescribable joy...there are no words.  I just stared at the screen and she broke my march back in time with, "shall we open it?"  And it read, "I found your name on Classmates.com and if you are the same GraceAnn Smith I met at the Army Pictorial Center in 1962....I've been looking for you for 39 years."

Jim and I were married soon after and we have been delightfully in love since as we had been from the time of our first profession.  We maintain we met in Heaven and it was by Divine Appointment we were ALWAYS meant to be together. 

Marie Francis was my sister.  She died April 7th, 1989 of a massive brain hemorhage