A Story

How to build a dream

When I was nineteen, I told this story to a seventeen-year-old girl. The story was about acres of land, a place of our own. I was trying to convince this girl to marry me. I don’t know if it was that story or something else that finally convinced her to say yes.

I was moving to California to attend a Deep Diver certification course. The day we were married off to California, we went. Complications happened and an industry that didn’t require manpower as we had been led to believe, we returned to Nevada. Working for my parents was not going to lead to this dream, so she agreed to my joining the Navy. Twenty-seven years, seven different commands and only seven years of the twenty-seven being shore duty. She waited for me through all the deployments, through two wars, with all the short turnarounds. When I came to my high year tenure, the number of years you can stay without being promoted to the next rank, I retired. After years of telling her, it will be my turn to follow you. I followed her to Alaska.

We are now back on our five acres in Washington. We have had a wonderful adventure in forty-four years. It isn’t as many acres as the story I told you years ago. There are a lot fewer cattle and maybe even too few chickens. It is a place that we have built together. I think that being here in this place together, makes this story even better than the one I told you so many years ago.

Peace and Love