I never thought about it before, but from this view of the Valley where I grew up (from the porch off my bedroom until I was nine)  the love of my life was somewhere out there……..

We were born in the same hospital only 18 days apart.  Back then mothers and newborns often spent 10 to 14 days in the hospital, so we missed each other by days.  I doubt if we came in contact again until we were about 14.  Even though we grew up in the same Valley there were a few towns that made up the area.

For some reason, today, I put my childhood address into Google and sure enough the house came up in Zillow.  What a surprise to see rooms that were so much a part of my childhood. My mother was born in this house,  it was in our family from the early 1900s until my grandfather’s death in 1963.  The kitchen was updated as was the bath but other than adding a downstairs powder room, probably off the kitchen, everything looks the same.  So thankful they kept the beautiful hardwood floors and woodwork. I think they were mahogany.   A few stained glass windows, an original fireplace and beautiful pocket doors that closed off the parlor from the rest of the house that I remembered are still intact.

As I look beyond the railing of the porch, I can see the house where the movie Tiger Warsaw was filmed.  Can you believe a movie staring Patrick Swayze was filmed by my house,  But that was years after I left the valley.

Moving from this wonderful home was a traumatic event at age nine. Little did I know that my whole life was still ahead.  Somewhere out there………….. in the valley lived the love of my life and this move brought us only streets apart.

We both made a move to a new home at age nine and in some twist of fate we got the exact same telephone numbers with the last two numbers switched.  This little quirk of phone numbers kept popping up as we aged into our teenage years.  Our voices came in contact over quick called wrong numbers on random occasions, that became on purposed wrong numbers during our dating years. Those phone numbers kept us in constant contact through our on and off periods until our separate numbers became one. So our moves not only brought us streets apart but also connected by numbers. Somewhere out there the phone lines kept us connected and intertwined when others tried to keep us apart.

Then school and friends seemed to bring us together constantly.  Church, study club, friends, record hops, parties, our small town picture show on Friday and Saturday nights, swimming or ice skating at the park. Then there was ice cream at Isalys, or the pizza shop across from the pool hall or his baseball games and football games, bon fires and sockhops or the house parties and trips to the lake.  Not many days from 9th thru 12th grade passed by that our eyes didn’t meet.  With each eye contact a smile followed  and then a grin and a flitter of our heartbeats and we knew.  We followed all the steps of young love, from infatuation, going steady, breaking up, hours on the phone.  When college came our parents were sure we’d forget each other was alive.  But we’ll forgive them because we love them, after all is said and done we’re one in a million a million to one.  He was out there somewhere and like all marriages made in heaven God kept us in each other’s lives until the knot was ready to be tied.