Soul Connections & Little Matchbox Cars

From the time I was a little girl, I knew that I wanted to be married. I mean, after seeing Disney princes sing and slay dragons to win the hearts of their princesses - I was totally for it, espeically if I got to wear a Disney style dress (which I did when Alan and I tied the knot.) In my late teens and early twenties, I wondered what it was that made two people decide that they wouldn't run out of things to talk about and to be around each other so much and not get on each other's nerves. I have always been a hopeless romantic and I was happy to learn what this was as I went along. You learn a lot about a person the more you get to know them, you get to know them so well that you can read their face like the pages of a book, you learn about give and take, to appreciate there is a time and place for everything and their pet peeves, the best way to annoy them in a way that they find frustrating yet endearing, what is absolute no-go and yet, they are still a mystery and every time you find a clue about who they were before they met you, or events that took place years before you came on the scene, it's fascinating and makes you love and appreciate them all the more and who they became, the choices they made which brought them to you. Fate is a beautiful, wild, crazy-ass thing that writes your life story as you live it. That is another thing I love, hearing the stories of Alan as a child, looking down at the goofy, sunny boy who was captured doing dorky poses just because - quoth he- "it's different" and when I look back on photos through my own childhood, I did the same thing. Nowadays it can be a bit tricky to find a 'nice, grown up photo' of Alan and me, because one of us is always pulling a funny face or he's covering my eyes with his palm, or I'm laughing like a loon. He and I (in our respective teenage years) each went through a punk phase and listened to the some of the same music. Alan even lived a few streets away from me years and years ago when I still lived at home. And yet, we never met until our souls were ready to meet. (See? Ever the hopeless romantic!) But that is what I have come to believe with my dabbling in researching soul connections, how our relationships with each other teach us in different ways, even if those soul connections implode horribly - we still have the lessons those souls connections taught us as we go forward in life. How to live, love, give, teach and nurture our souls and reflect that in how we live with the lessons we have learned and the people we learned them with, whether those stories were good or bad. For the past two weekends during lockdown, Alan and I have been sorting through the contents of our garage. What I enjoy about unpacking those boxes is finding the treasures that mean so much to me, like a box of romance novels and my crystal collection, along with my Angel and crystal reading cards. It kind of feels like opening a gift I gave to myself when I really needed it. I also found a copy of Picnic At Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsey and last night I started reading it, had to put it down two chapters in because I wouldn't have put it down otherwise. There were also momentos, year books, photo albums and Alan tells me a little bit about every person he recognizes in the photos and I love hearing about them. I also noticed a bag of match box cars and while Alan and I were drinking a glass of port while we were out at dinner, I asked him whether he played with them and he said that he did even though he shouldn't have. I married someone who wants to tell me the stories that made him the man I love today and I guess that answers the question I used to ask myself about whether married couples run out of things to talk about.