Meeting Sara

In the winter of 1999/2000 I found myself a bachelor, who while legally still married, lived alone in southern Maryland with absolutely no plans to return to my marriage.  My wife had moved on, making some financial decisions that would impact both our lives negatively for years to come.  I had decided I needed female companionship, if for no other reason than to have something to do on Saturday night as well as someone to talk to.  I'd been seeing a nice lady who was a teller in my bank, but she wanted too badly to be a boss.  I'd met a widow via a dating page on the Internet, but she was still traumatized by her husband's passing and could talk of little else.  I chatted on line with a lady who said she liked opera, but it turned out she was far more interested in Andrea Bocelli than Giuseppe Verdi.

On January 4, 2000, a Tuesday, I was watching the Sugar Bowl football game between Virginia Tech and Florida State.  It was probably a good enough game, but my mind just wasn't in it, so I was fooling around on my computer with the television off to one side.  This was before high speed connections and fancy software, so I was on AOL, which, at the time, listed every user in a searchable database (imagine that now?), so I decided to see if there was any lady willing to chat.  I asked to see names and e-mail addresses of women currently on line.  Whoa - millions, or at least lots of thousands.

I tried to shorten the list by only looking for ladies of a certain age.  Still a huge number.  Finally I settled on asking for ladies currently on line, in a certain age range, celebrating a birthday that day - 01/04.  AOL returned with four names, so I sent each of them a photo of my flower garden with wishes for a happy birthday.

Only one responded.  She used the computer nickname "GardenNymph" and said, "The flowers are lovely.  It's not my birthday.  Do I know you?"

It turns out that AOL couldn't tell the difference between 01/04 and 04/01.  The lady was born on April 1st in the range of years I'd specified, and lived in Georgia.   We chatted back and forth a little that evening and the next morning, before I went to work, I sent her a note.

That evening we again chatted back and forth over dial-up Internet connections and thus began a ritual in which we'd chat twice a day during the week and perhaps more often on weekends.  Then one day I asked if I could call her.  Born and raised in Georgia where she'd always lived, her soft southern accent was far different from the quasi-Yankee accent of metropolitan Washington DC where I'd lived for fourteen years.

We went on that way for a while and decided our next step would be to meet in person.  Her aunt warned her against meeting me for fear I'd "do her wrong"  and my neighbors worried that she'd "do me wrong."

Our weekend turned out well.  She met me at Atlanta Hartsfield  International, the Worlds Busiest Airport and, because we'd discussed what we'd both be wearing, had no problem finding each other at the gate.  We became so engrossed in conversation that walking along the concourse we missed the exit to the trains and had to backtrack.  The next day, I met her son and daughter, her brother and his wife and both sisters and her widowed mother.  I'd gotten tickets to the Atlanta Symphony that featured a Russian violinist I was familiar with, so we spent one evening there (I fell asleep)  and the next day we had an early evening dinner on the sidewalk at a restaurant across the street from the University of Georgia.

Fast forward to 2002.  She had a home in Georgia near family, friends and her job.  I had a job and a  home in Maryland near friends, most of whom were also friends with my wife, and no family anywhere close.  I had retired from the Air Force with a decent monthly paycheck no matter where I lived.   I filed for divorce, spent a fortune for an English speaking detective in Lisbon, Portugal to find my wife and serve her papers.  I paid a lot more money for both of our lawyers, but the divorce was final with relief, not sadness.  I gave notice at work and had to explain to the CEO that I wasn't blindsiding him, but that what I'd been telling him all along was finally taking place.  I sold my house to the first people that looked at it, gave away a lot of furniture I wouldn't be needing, hired a moving company to take the rest to Georgia, said goodby to friends, neighbors and co-workers, and moved to Georgia, and married the State Peach of the Peach State on September 21, 2002.