Our 4th Wedding Anniversary

I’ll never forget the first time I called Fabiola with butterflies in my stomach because of the suspense of her picking up the phone; was she going to or not. Let me take you back 6 months before the anticipation of the phone call. My mother’s house keeper knew a married couple who had two daughters and their older one just recently became divorced who’s name was Fabiola. Her name sounded like she came right off the boat as an 18th century immigrant from Spain so I that made me want to meet her even more, because a woman who has a name like that doesn’t need a middle name, when I have two, and I also knew she was was going to have some flavor with her personality. 

My mother’s house keeper and her parents took about six months to get us to meet each other; Fabiola or “Fab,” as I call her, didn’t really want to date any more and I don’t blame her, but fortunately her father almost made her against her will go out with me. My mother’s house keeper told me, after talking to her father, Victor, that the best time to call her would be at 5:00 p.m., which is when she got off work when she was working at the National Center for Exploited and Missing Children. Her father also told this to me on Facebook, and that she has a child who was three years old at the time. The only thing that I remember saying to him is, “I would be honored to take your daughter to dinner.” He didn’t say no.  Now getting back to my phone call… she answered, and it was a strong, caring and beautiful voice. It sounded like a thunderstorm with sunshine at the same time. 

I remember when she sent me her first photo of her. I thought it was actually a beautiful photo of her, but she was being a smart ass about it and sent me a photo of a female zombie; I still thought it was a beautiful photo. The first photo I ever saw of her was actually at a beach in her bikini holding her daughter, Khloe, and I thought to myself, I think I can manage that. After we talked for about 10 minutes or so, we finally agreed on a place where we would meet up, which would be at National Harbor, because it was closer to her parents house where she was living at the time. We went to the Walrus, where the food was okay, but the more important thing was the ferris wheel ride. I remember that I wore my leather jacket because I saw a picture of her wearing a leather jacket, and I didn’t want to seem that I was out of her dating league. 

This may seem like a date out of a 1950s movie, but we went on the ferris wheel and got our pictures taken. It took us a couple of minutes to actually get up to the top, and the wheel had closed in pods by the way, kind of like a gondola. So because of that, there was music that was playing in the pods and one of the songs that came on was “Sweet Caroline.” I couldn’t believe it because that song, which is almost the Boston national anthem, was almost as if my dad was looking down on me, him being from Boston. There were a few other songs that came on, but that was the only one I remember. Anyway, we went our own separate ways and on our one year dating anniversary, I recreated the same scenario, except this time I put a little more oomph to it… I proposed and she said yes. Since we were i an enclosed pod in a ferris wheel I couldn't exactly get down on one knee. We met on Friday May 13th, 2016, and I proposed to her one year later in 2017. 

I wanted my dad to be there for when we were wed and I wanted there to be fireworks, which she agreed with. So I decided to marry us on July 4, 2018, American Independence Day. Also, since I do have short term memory problems, I thought that day would be easy for me to remember. But there was a kick to it: I married us, as I am a priest with the Universal Life Church, inside my father’s mausoleum so my dad could be there. Fabiola and Khloe moved in, and the rest is history. I used to be one of these guys that thought that this almost legendary but ubiquitous process of falling in love would never happen to me in the first place, but certainly not again. Well, all you have to do is just let the energy of the universe take its mysterious paths of and respect it and something good will come of it.