James Farley and I met for the very first time in Rota, Spain, at some point during 1988, my sophomore year and his senior year. We became good friends, spending most of our time together in the ditch across the street from the school, aka “the smoking section.” At the end of that school year, James went off to college in Germany, and I started my last year at DGF that fall. In a time when there was only snail mail, we somehow managed to stay in touch.
In the fall of 1990, my dad retired from the Navy and I was forced to finish my senior year in Oklahoma. James decided to postpone finishing college, and headed off to Navy boot camp. The next time I saw James was the spring of 1991, at the end of my senior year of high school. He had completed boot camp and flew to Oklahoma to visit me. During his visit, James asked me to marry him. Up to that point, we had only been good friends so I was surprised by his proposal. I had no idea he felt that strongly about me. Oh, how I wish I had known! I was already engaged to someone else so I said no, but over the years, I never forgot James or the out-of-the-blue proposal.
I thought of James frequently as the years flew by. I knew he was active duty Navy, so I would constantly check casualty reports during Operations Desert Shield and Storm and other conflicts, hoping he was okay. Once the Internet was accessible, I would spend a lot of time searching for him and other long lost friends from my travels as a Navy Brat. One day, frustrated that Classmates.com would not allow access to e-mail addresses without a paid subscription, I decided to go ahead and pay for a 3-month membership. That decision turned out to be one of the best I have ever made in my life. Suddenly, I had access to people I had not spoken to or seen in almost two decades! I quickly fired off a few emails, and James was one of the first people I contacted.
On May 17, 2007, James responded to my e-mail. I remember feeling elated that he was alive and well. James was married and had raised a stepdaughter, and I was married, raising my two boys so our initial contact and emails were as nothing more than old friends. As we caught up with each other’s lives, our friendship quickly rekindled. Both of us were suffering the (unrelated) demises of our respective marriages. We found support and understanding in each other until eventually we transitioned from old friends to new friends to best friends. I leaned on him heavily during my unexpected divorce, and he was a rock for me during that difficult time in my life. More than anyone else I know, he lifted me up and gave me happiness and hope. I felt I had found my soul mate at last.
Have you ever heard the saying, “True love is a friendship set on fire”? Never has any statement been truer for me. By June of 2008, James and I were in love and making plans for our future together. I moved to Virginia to be with him, but having both been through separation and divorce, we weren’t financially stable enough for me to stay there. I moved back to Oklahoma, and he tries to fly out once a month and on holidays to visit with me and the boys. He has been phenomenal with my kids. They could not have a better “stepdad” than James.
Next summer, after my oldest son leaves for college, my youngest son and I will be moving back to Virginia to be with James again. We plan to add to our family if Mother Nature cooperates, and then spend the rest of our lives together, raising our family and enjoying our love and life. Maybe one day we will make it back to Rota to visit the ditch where our destiny first began all those years ago.
