Skip to main content

Happy Valentine's Day...

What does Valentine's Day mean to you?  

 We each have our own unique story of love and how we met "the one." 
Some have funny stories, strange stories, or simply humdrum stories that are special.

 Here's how I met mine.

My cousin, Sue, married the guy's best friend, Bill. Sue and Bill had set me up on several dates that fizzled. I wasn't sure about this third one. However, I went along with it.
AND fifty some years later, I can report that it was a success. He was exciting, tall, dark, and handsome. A world traveler who'd been in the Navy (a Seabee), traveled aboard ships, vacationed in Hong Kong, stationed in the Phillipines, visited Hawaii and lived on Midway Island as a swabbie. He was, in other words, exactly what I was looking for. Someone who would take me away from my childhood home where I thought my life was the pits. (How is it we learn after we mature that our lives were pretty darned good growing up! In fact, real good!)

 We started our lives in our home state of West Virginia. Then went on to jobs in Ohio and Michigan. Finally, we bought a retirement home in FL which we renovated and then moved back to Ohio.

 Over the years, we kept busy with three daughters, three son in laws, eight grandchildren, and one pug named Sam.

 Living, planning, moving, growing. Though my guy is gone now, I'm still a romantic. I'd love to hear your stories about your romance or romances and about where you are today. Some of you may have brand new loves, old loves, loves that left you heartbroken or loves that you found late in life. You can even add loves that never panned out. Like I said we all have our stories and I'd like to hear yours. All of them. And someday I'll tell you all of mine! 

Sue, Barbara, Bill, Raymond at Der Dutchman - their 50th anniversary dinner

********

If you're looking for a love story to read this month click on the link below and read Anne and Rob's story. Told in letter form, it's a soldier's letters home to his bride while he served in Vietnam. While war is never easy, this story is about having hope. And how true love can pull us through in times of trouble.




 http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Anne-Love-Letters-Nam-ebook/dp/B00JZ5FBQO
Labels:

Comments

  1. Susan Flett SwiderskiFebruary 3, 2016 at 12:32 PM

    Hi-ya! It's been a long time... Too bad you didn't participate in the Valentine's bloghop that Arlee Bird sponsored; this post would have fit right in.

    While visiting the blog of one of the other hop participants, I happened to see your new book in the sidebar, and what can I say? I had absolutely no choice but to immediately BUY it! I'm really looking forward to reading it, too. See, I happen to have a box filled with every letter my husband wrote me when he was in the Army... including his tour in Nam. I've toyed off and on with using them somehow as the basis for a book, but never followed through on it. So, I am reeeeeally interested in reading your book! (The book I "might" have written...? HA!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Susan Flett SwiderskiFebruary 4, 2016 at 10:35 PM

    Hi, again. Well, I read your book, and enjoyed it immensely. Great job! (I even posted reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.)

    Take care.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. B. WHITTINGTONFebruary 12, 2016 at 10:58 PM

      Many thanks! Love what I've read of yours as well. Appreciate the reviews immensely.

      Delete
  3. Janet,February 5, 2016 at 9:16 AM

    Hi, Barbara. I enjoyed reading your love story. My husband and I met on a blind date. I was seeing another boy at school at the time, but we had never went out on a real date. Only saw each other at school (held hands, walked the halls together, got caught by the principal kissing behind the school house :o) . He had promised on a couple of occasions to take me out on a real date, but those dates never happened. So, when my girlfriend said her boy friend's brother was in on leave from the Navy and would I go out on a double date with them, I said yes. After all, the other guy and I weren't going steady or anything. To make a long story short, the boy in the Navy and I have been married now for almost 38 years. Happy Ending.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. B. WHITTINGTONFebruary 12, 2016 at 10:57 PM

      Love this story, Janet. Those Navy boys are quite handsome and end up being good husbands! Thanks for sharing.

      Delete
  4. GailFebruary 14, 2016 at 11:41 AM

    What a wonderful love story.

    My love and I will be married forty-four years this year. He knows I prefer live flowers to cut because I think killing a flower is not romantic. He knows I prefer rocks or bottles or found art...something from the heart.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. B. WHITTINGTONFebruary 15, 2016 at 3:09 PM

      That is so sweet Gail. We each value different things and our honey knows what we want and need. Thank you for sharing.

      Delete
  5. MunirGhiasuddinFebruary 15, 2016 at 6:15 PM

    In my time and in India most marriages were arranged and so was ours. We have been married forty four years and while we don't act like lovers do, there is almost nothing we will not do for each other.
    It is nice to see you write again. Love the story you just introduced.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shingles: not the roofing kind...

Just when I thought things could not get any worse at our house my husband R came down with shingles. On the day I had to be at the hospital in Columbus with one adult daughter in the morning and then go to Cincinnati to pick up her husband after his stomach surgery the day before, R gets up with a rash that had turned to blisters. We made a quick dash 40 miles away to our family Dr. for a check up and yes my diagnosis was correct. Shingles! So armed with two medications we headed to the medical center to see our daughter, then to Cincinnati to pick up her husband and then home to collapse and hope that that's the end of our downward spiral. I'm worn to a frazzle and so is R. No time for writing or fretting about writing. I do feel good knowing that I have some contest entries out (short stories and one novel) and will be working on my novel at least two days this coming week. I have my writers meeting on Monday at Great Expectations Cafe and Book Store and look for...
21 comments
Read more

A Revolutionary New Diet...

Recently I went on a diet. Like most diets this one was scheduled around a major life event. My daughter's wedding. There would be no shopping for a mother-of-the-bride dress until the pounds came off. Typically I go on a diet on Monday and by Wednesday I've folded beneath the weight of a German chocolate cake. I've been hijacked by as little as a stale pink sugar wafer discovered in the dark recesses of the bread drawer. But this time things were going to be different. I could tell as I went to get the mail and discovered the first crocus of the season. Life was looking up. Even though an icy rain began to fall, my spirits weren't dampened. Not even when huge drops pelted me on the head and I had to dash inside. My latest plan would revolutionize dieting. If it worked for me it would work for the world. I smelled a book deal. I could see myself all made-over and liposuctioned sitting between Oprah and Dr. Oz. It was full speed ahead. Gone were those complex menus...
23 comments
Read more

Mother's Leather Britches...

My mother gardened all her life. It was one of her great loves, next to family, God, and country. Because she grew up during the Depression, she learned to use every last item from her garden for canning, preserving, drying or pickling. Every year at the end of the green bean season she made leather britches, dried beans that would keep for the winter. These were the last beans hanging on the vines. The beans inside had grown to full size with outsides a bit withered. They were beyond the stage to can or preserve, or even to pickle. Although her fried pickled green beans and corn bread were the best in the world. (Well, next to her biscuits and fried apples.) Mother started the drying process with clean beans. She would spread a clean white sheet on a table in the wash room and spread the beans out on that, giving them space to dry. Sometime she would carry the sheet outside and put them on a table in the sun to further the process. The next step involved needle and thread ...
18 comments
Read more