Reflections

Rebecca Jo · December 25, 2010

I think I did this on Christmas Eve the first year Wes and I were married. Maybe the second too.

I would never ever want to go down the immigration path again. It was hard.

But would I change having gone down that path to be with Wes? Not in a million years would I change it. Every once in a while we get a lucky break. A certain someone is out there, and we find them. Who knew I would find him 4000 miles away from me? Who knew that through the various twists and turns of our lives we would one day happen to cross paths electronically.

How could I tell that what I sensed was real? How could he? How good was our internet "radar"?

How permanently etched in my mind is the first time I saw him, walking across the airport terminal, so tall and so tired, smiling from ear to ear, pulling off that silly hat, sweeping me off the ground.

How can I forget the look on his face when he first saw me in my wedding dress. And the look on my sister's face - she knew. She knew what she was seeing was once in a lifetime.

And how have these years been with my Irishman. They have been blessed. Oh sure, roadblocks. Adjustments. Blending families. Moving house. Unemployment.

But then there is this. There is that constant and abiding knowledge that I am treasured and loved. And that I am the luckiest woman in the world for having found the gentlest, most honest and decent man that never grew up in America. But who found me just the same.

I wish all of you here the same kind of happiness we have found. And I wish you all a very Happy Christmas.