Happy Birthday, Shari...!!

   A few weeks ago while going through a box of old photos. My son Aidan says to Shari "Who is  the hottie with Dad at this party". Shari replied "that's me" Aidan says "you mean I just called my Mom a hottie"
yeh, buddy you did. "Oh by the way your Mom was four months pregnant with you when that picture was taken"

   Well some years have gone by since that picture was taken. She still is just as beautiful to me. But still an occasional fact about their Mom will surprise our 3 kids. A few months back when my oldest daughter was talking of going in the navy the subject of guns and shooting came up. I mentioned to Journey that her mother was a pretty good shot. Journey laughed. I said  "Your Mom qualified as an expert marksman with rifle and pistol about 4 years before you were born. She wore the medals and ribbons on her uniform to prove that until she got out of the navy. She could pick the buttons off your shirt at a hundred yards with a rifle. Journey was shocked. "Not my mom"

    "Mom is a marksman" "yep".I said "you know she used to be able to run a mile and 1/2 in under 10 minutes. I don't think you could do that"  "Well what happened" Journey asked. "Well that was a while ago" I responded  "Since then she had 3 kids in 5 years and isn't as young  "But don't underestimate your Mother, She took good care of you guys under difficult circumstances while I was deployed"

    But its really been in the last year that Shari has shined. Working a job she doesn't particularly care for, She was at my side every evening during my extended hospital visit last year. She has paid the bills and kept the creditors off our back while I have been slow in recovering, not bringing in much income

   I want to go into the in and outs of how we finally got together after knowing each and  being friends for 5 years. I won't, but I will say it almost didn't happen. I proposed to Shari in a parking lot In Orlando, Fl where she was coming back on active duty after a few years in the reserves. Not the most romantic of settings but the engagement ring I had bought was burning a hole in my pocket.

   She agreed to marry me but my divorce wasn't final yet. Then I got stationed in Japan while she was still in Florida and the powers that be in the Navy wanted to send her to Adak, Alaska. One of the islands farthest out in the Aleutian islands not quite in Sarah Palin's back yard. Somehow between me pleading with my Commanding Officer in Japan and her pleading with her CO. She got her orders changed to Japan instead of Alaska nearly a year after we first got our separate orders.

   Finally in March of 87, living in Hayama Japan, my divorce was finalized and we could marry. By this time Shari was 8 months pregnant with Journey. for some reason I don't remember we couldn't marry in Japan. Had to do it in the States. In May of 1987 in a rush because we had to get to New Jersey, Shari and I were married in Redondo Beach California by Carmen and Lupe with our 6 week old daughter Journey as a witness.

  You know that like most marriages we've had our ups and downs. I haven't always been the husband she thought she was getting. She has always been patient with me, through the deployments, the drinking, the depression and the cancer She's always optimistic. But occasionally I find her in tears in the middle of the night worried about our future and the future of our children Journey, Aidan and Cameryn. I love her more today than I did 23 years ago when I proposed. She is the backbone of our marriage. Oh! She was a hell of good forecaster too.

Addendum to Norman (Hurricane) Smith

Norman Smith never followed the rulebook. He was at the Beatles audition in 1962 and if he had followed the ‘standing orders’ from Abbey Road, the band would have been sent back to Liverpool. Later, as head of an EMI company, Parlophone, Norman sent out a ‘looking for talent’ letter to agents, only to be accused of poaching artists from other companies. But, against EMI's orders, Norman went off to check out a new band in a smelly basement club. The club was called UFO; the band was called Pink Floyd.

But Norman’s life was like that. In his late 40’s, he decided to reinvent himself as either Hurricane Smith or Amos Gherkin. He hatched a plan to get his first record released, which involved bugging the EMI ‘New Releases’ committee to find out what they thought of it ASAP, so that he would be ‘ahead of the game.’ He was reticent about jumping on the memoir bandwagon and didn’t want to merely capitalise on his associations, but the stories were far too good not to share.