36 years today

When I was fifteen years old I spent a week at Camp Langston in Mount Pleasant, Texas. My husband, James, worked at the camp as a wrangler that summer. I was a little older than some of the kids staying there as campers, but was the age of most of the camp counselors assigned to each cabin and stayed the summer as help. I soon found that I wasn't happy of that fact because if you weren't working there for the summer, as a camper you had to be in the cabin and lights out by 10 pm. The others got to sit around the fire and visit with their friends. I stayed as busy as I could with the camps activities, but my favorite was the horse back riding. That is where I first met my now husband, James. He let me ride a yellow palomino each time I went riding and let me ride along side of him and visit, even thou you were suppose to take the next horse saddled at that time.
I also saw that most of the teenagers working there, including James, went to eat about the same time everyday and passed right by my cabin….you guessed it, I would try to go eat at that time also. I guess being a teenager with a crush on a cute wrangler was just silly. Heck, I had a boyfriend back home in Combine. James was the only working teenager there who treated me like a friend and not just a snotty nose kid there for a week in the summer.
At camp Langston there was a general store where your parents left a so called bank account for snacks and crafts and such. It also had a post office to pick up letters from home or packages. At the end of my week at camp I carved a heart on the cabin wall with mine and James initals  and wrote a very short thank you note to James, only thanking him for being so kind to me , taking the the to  talk to me, and letting me ride that same horse each day. I left that note in the post office, never getting to say goodbye to my new friend, but I did leave a return address on the envelope.
A few months went by and I received a letter one day in the mail from…..guess who? JAMES. That letter became the first of five years of writing letters to each other. We became good friends and fell in love, each letter becoming closer and getting to know each other more. We had many telephone calls and only three visits in person during those five years. On the third time we saw each other, one weekend in Dallas while my mother and I were visiting a family member, James was invited to come meet me there. That was the weekend he asked me to marry him. We married on March 10, of 1974, thirty six years ago today.
My husband has always been my best friend in life, my soul mate and companion, a wonderful father to our children, a proud grandfather, and the one I have loved and will always love forever! I thank God has someone matched for everyone, and I thank him each day that he gave me such a loving soul mate and partner in life.  To this day , I still have every letter and card James ever sent or gave me.
Both our daughters went to Camp Langston when they were little. The heart was still on the wall there when they went.
“Happy Anniversary Honey”, I look forward to our rocking years together