Alone On A Limb

I knew when we started out from Wilmore, Kentucky, that I would take an unscheduled side trip around Fort Mountain along the way to Atlanta. I wanted to ask a question. I wanted the right answer. I needed a little help and I thought the sound of Holly Creek splashing down the mountain, the smell of green pines, the majesty of the Cohutta...

We walked among the giant pines. She rested against one and I leaned in to kiss her, and asked my question.

She gave the right answer! Just one word expressed unreservedly, enthusiastically, beautifully.

That was 44 years ago today.

(This picture is a year or two later.)

BTW, Sheila reminded me a while ago that she was embarrassed to have agreed to marry me after we had been dating again for only a couple of months. That's why we waited through February and March to announce our intentions to friends and family. Of course I had made up my mind before I ever asked her out that fall. Matter of fact, in the late summer of seventy I had made a list -- actually wrote down a list!* -- of possibly available marriagable girls I had dated and ordered them according to their attractiveness to me in terms of intellect, beauty, personality, compatibility of beliefs, je ne sais quoi,.... and I found Sheila's name stayed right there at the top of the list. I was prepared to venture down a very nice list (IMO) if necessary, but my first choice said yes. I am a lucky man. 

As long as I am baring my sentimental soul, here is a bit of verse I wrote in the nineties about that choice:

I Suppose I Could Have Loved Jane

I suppose I could have loved Jane,**

And Lydia** often waxed wise and gay.

You are lovely, true — were others plain?

You laugh at my wit — so did they.

I long for your kiss and your touch —

But beauty, wit, passion are all around.

Others have kisses as sweet; and as much,

All and any, your charms abound.

Even now in age I see sometimes

A glance, a smile, a coy frown

And think my songs, my artful rhymes

Could win a youthful night in town.

Temptations beckon, the world's untrue —

Our promises keep. My world is you

*Further evidence that I am, indeed, brother to Janice Shaw Crouse, the Queen of Options. 

** Names have been changed to protect the rhyme and rhythm.