Photo by Camilo Cotrino
How it Started
17 years ago tonight, I went on a first date with a incredibly cranky yet also incredibly attractive sailboat captain.
I was looking for a fun time, but I was a disaster on that first date.
Seriously; I would not have gone out with me again.
We’d worked together for a while but I had no clue as to his age, and he wasn’t volunteering the information. When I finally asked him, point-blank, how old he was, he told me he was concerned I would think he was too old for me.
Photo via Cathy Salustri
That’s when I (unintentionally) insulted him by telling him I didn’t care about his age because younger men were too driven and had too many goals. I was sick of that, I said. I didn”t want to date men with visions and goals and dreams because all they wanted to do was work and life was too short for that.
At that, a weird look crossed his face, and he quietly told me, “I think it’s important you know that I had goals.” He then went on to explain he’d met them all, and this life he had now? That was his reward.
I was also crystal clear that I didn’t ever care to remarry or have a serious relationship, which is always a fun thing to assert loudly on a first date.
He walked me to my car, he kissed me, and from that moment, I had no doubt that this was my person.
Photo by Camilo Cotrino
How It’s Going
A few years later, we moved in together. A year later he went with me across the state while I worked on Backroads of Paradise. A few years later, we bought a house, and a few years after that, he asked me to marry him. We had a less-than-traditional wedding on the beach. The night before we fed everyone freshly dead wild Florida hog; the day of the wedding we had a seafood boil.
When I first started mentioning him in my writing, I referred to him only as “El Cap.” You see, at his core, he’s a private person and I live a fairly public life. Today, thanks to buying The Gabber Newspaper, people know his real name. He doesn’t love it, but he does love me, and so he soldiers on.
He’s still intermittently cranky, although really, not so much, and I have proved that, delightful as I may be, conversations with me can still perplex him. But at the end of every day, he’s still my person, and for reasons I will never quite understand, I’m still his.
Every day since that first date has been an adventure, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Photo by Cathy Salustri
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