This last weekend would have been our forty-fifth wedding anniversary, and it took me this long to realize that Janet really meant something she had said all those years ago.
I’ve already talked about how we met at an education conference which I covered for my newspaper. I had actually been filling in for a woman who couldn’t make it to that event. The next week the woman came into the office and told me she had talked to the public relations officer of the educational coop who had told her to send back that cute reporter anytime. I was, it seems, the cute reporter she was referring to. I immediately called her to go out the next weekend. As I inelegantly phrased it at the time, “Any girl stupid enough to think I’m cute I had to meet as soon as possible.”
We did and a little over six months later we were married. I revealed to Janet what the woman had told me and she said she would not have said it if she thought the woman was going to tell me. Now that was the statement which I categorized as a lie for the next forty-five years.
The woman Janet shared her observation with was a notorious blabbermouth in two states, Virginia and Tennessee. Perhaps even Kentucky but I never had verification of any stories she had spread beyond Cumberland Gap. Janet disingenuously denied realizing the implications of her innocent comments, and I dismissed her denial as Southern affectation.
I repeated the story through the years because I felt it belied her disdain for dainty belle conspiracies. Of course as our marriage entered its fourth decade I let the old episode take its place in the vaults of time because it didn’t make any difference at this point.
Now, pondering it after cancer took Janet away, I decided that she, indeed, did not realize the Mouth of the South was going to pass on her remark. She explained it was on her mind at the moment; once said, she went on to other matters. Janet always said what she meant and never thought of the consequences.
Yes, that rationale fitted her behavior pattern displayed for her sixty-something years on this Earth. My conception of coquettish intrigue was totally out of character for Janet and I should have known it. Thank goodness my mistake did not make a whit of difference to her.
Now the mystery had been solved it returned to its place in the vaults of time because it still didn’t make any difference at this point. All that mattered was that we had each other, faults and all, and enjoyed every moment of it.