Part Of The Deal

There are a couple of other aspects of Lady Susanna that needs to be mentioned.

Not only is she affirming, admiring and tolerant of someone such as me but she came to me with an obvious gift and another gift that surfaced after we were married.

The obvious one is this: Lady Susanna is almost peerless when it comes to children.  How to make them happy; how to help them to learn; how to understand what it really means when a baby cries and other aspects of the lives of children that I never knew are all things that she knows well.

I observed this as we were (and I use the word "we" loosely) raising our son, Michael St.James.  La Preciosa was never at a loss to know exactly what to do under any circumstance of his life.  The fact that he is, now, a well-adjusted and happy adult is solid proof of her gift.

The gift that surfaced after we were married was (and is) as important to both of us as it is to Michael St. James.  You see,  Lady Susanna was raised around cats; all sorts of cats.  The poor woman never had a dog until she married me.  I know that not all Yankee children grow up without dogs - but Lady Susanna did.

We drove up to Black Canyon with the intent of getting a Blue Tick Hound.  Instead, we came home with George: a Houndoyte.  George was soon joined by Moonshine the Bloodhound.  Then came Mr. Peabody ("Pete") the Border Collie and Sally, the Texas 'Ol Black Dog.  Currently, our family includes Mr. Eugene L. Dog (a Jack Russell) and Missy (another Texas 'Ol Black Dog).  Sometime in the future, a British bulldog may join our family ... but not just yet.

Now, really, what do you think?  A woman who is gifted when it comes to children and would also rescue even the ugliest and most stupid dog on the face of the earth is much more than i deserved.  She is, however, the great deal that I got!

Finding Is Winning

I was a two time looser.  Wandering through a wasteland of self-pity and depressing fantasies of a life alone, I had resigned myself that I would never have a personal community.  I just knew that it'd be me and my 'ol dog, Shadow.

"Things' didn't help at all.  The '53 Chevy pickup in the driveway and a couple of new guns only masked the real problem. Irish whiskey didn't help, either.  I was born to be in a highly personal relationship but didn't know how to pull it off.

Doing what I was trained to do, I met her.  I met her but I didn't know it was her.  I thought she was just another woman who thought that my clerical collar was tantamount to holiness; the kind of woman who would believe that I wasn't just as fumbling as the dimmest of the dim.

I knew that, if people ever found out that I wasn't perfect, they'd make cruel sport of me ... even if I was a wounded vet not far removed from the Drug Wars on the Mexican border.

Some months into our relationship, I was dismayed to discover a new feeling in my innermost self.  It was the unfounded belief that, even if this woman knew all about me, it wouldn't matter; to her or to me.

I ended our spiritually-professional relationship and asked her to go to the Good Earth in Tempe for some tea.

From that first moment, she began to show myself to me in a way I had never experienced.

She was intelligent, witty, self-sufficient, lived in a small rock house in the backyard of a guy who was a Bible-thumper with a great heart.  And she sang.  She sang beautifully.  Even though she was of the Hippie persuasion, she saw right through my martial past and focused on the real me.

She never objected to my banjo playing or to my shooting.  Who was this woman?

I couldn't stand it anymore.  Whichever of us proposed marriage doesn't matter.  It happened.

Since then, it has only been better; even through rough times of disagreements, sicknesses, job losses, moving, our child growing to adulthood and everything else that destroys most matrimonial relationships.  You see, even though I'm still a fumbler, she sees right through the fumbling and loves what she sees (it still amazes me that she does).

She's even better now than she was when I met her.  She's gone by a fair amount of names but, besides Sweething or Preciosa,  I just call her Lady Susanna.