by Bill Rhynes

Created on: April 14, 2009   Last Updated: April 15, 2009

This morning, I was sitting down drinking a cup of coffee, waiting for the time to take the boy to school, and my woman came into the living room talking about something, and I saw her.

The 19 year old girl I met so long ago and fell in love with. She appears from time to time, at the most random of moments. Just beneath the surface of the woman I fell in love with all over again. The woman who amazes me with her intellect, her spirit and her beauty.

This woman who has endured so much and still has the ability to make me laugh at the silliest thing. The woman who re-captured my heart and took on a life with me as her partner.

Together, we have made a solemn pledge to each other, to grow stronger and wiser. We do, together, stumble, fall, and rise again...each time a little better.

The challenges from being a grown-up never seem to give us much of a rest, as we endeavor to rise up beyond the limitations of the people we have been and and the lives we have both led up until now.

Sometimes, the weight of it all makes me lose focus. In some ways, I'm so much harder of a person than I was when she first met me; So much more jaded, sometimes insensitive, but little by little, I am seeing it, and am trying.

I am trying because I am a man now, and I can't be the foolish, selfish boy I was way back then.

I remember being a young boy. I knew that I never wanted to grow up and forget how to be young, like adults seem to do. But in so many ways, I realize I have let that happen to me. We are all dealt a particular hand in this life, and sometimes we are forced to take on an advanced level of maturity and responsibility at an early age. Such was my situation I suppose.

She had to grow up early, too. And heaped upon her were burdens of hurt and betrayal of the cruelest kind. She has been through so many things. Things which can distort one's perception of self-worth. Things which push us into a corner and force us to find ways of coping.

Just like me, she had to leave her little girl behind. I think that that can make one bitter, but to her credit, bitterness isn't a trait that rules her heart. She never forgot that young girl inside her.

That young girl appears again, from time to time, and reminds me she never really went any where. She is till very much alive and well.

The same girl I fell in love with so long ago...

my woman travels time. She travels time and she takes me with her.

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