Dear Brady: “What’s so special about Diane?”

My youngest son, Brady, has a way of cutting to the heart of things. After recently returning home to Anchorage from the top of planet Earth (north slope of Alaska), he saw the announcement that Diane and I were engaged. As a son concerned that perhaps his old Dad had gone soft in the head, he wanted to know why I would want to marry again after the disastrous ending of my previous marriage.

Specifically, he wanted to know, “What’s so special about Diane?”

So for Brady and for anyone else who may be wondering but who haven’t had the guts to ask, let me try to explain.

Dear Brady,

Hope all is well with you there at the top of Earth. It is at this time of year when I can really identify with the harshness of the climate in which you live. While it’s 7° in Anchorage, it’s 42° here in Florida. It’s like we’re weather twinsies.

So you asked me what’s so special about Diane that I would want to marry her, given the craziness of the past year and a half. Good question. Fair question. Let me back up just a little and see if this helps.

Of course after things unfolded the way they did, there was no possible way I could ever trust another human being enough to have an emotionally intimate relationship. When someone whom you trust completely betrays you at a level like that, trust is a commodity that is simply not available. So I made peace with the fact that I’d have friends and acquaintances but would never have a close relationship with another woman. Why would I make myself vulnerable to that kind of betrayal again?

And it was in the midst of this emotional upheaval that I became reacquainted with Diane.

As you know, Diane and I knew each other in high school, about a thousand years and 8,000 miles ago. I had just completed the first of my three high school years in Germany, something of an outsider since my parents weren’t military at the time and it was the first time since I’d started school that I didn’t live in the hometown in which I grew up.

Even though you were an Air Force brat, you never had to (got to?) experience the overseas brat life. It’s really quite extraordinary, something I still think about today.

I’m fascinated by the dynamic that occurs in that environment. People from all walks of life are plucked from their safe homes, with people they know and a culture with which they are familiar, and dropped into a weird crucible in which the social instinct kicks in and you find ways to connect with people who may be vastly different from you, but with whom you crave a connection.

Keep in mind that I went through this in the 1970’s. There were no internet, email, texts, Skype, or Facebook. Telephone calls were very expensive and used only on the rare occasions when family emergencies happened. For example, I recall only two calls from Aunt Malinda during the three years I was there. The second was the birth of your cousin, Sarah. The first was when Aunt Malinda called, sobbing, to inform us that Elvis had died. Hey...we all define “family emergencies” differently. But you get my point.

Not only were we dropped into a group of people whom we’d never known and who didn’t know us, there was virtually no contact with the outside world. Oh, sure, there were letters and cards but in the fast-paced world of high school, waiting two or three weeks for a correspondence seemed like lifetimes. We occasionally stayed connected after people left but it wasn’t the same as our day-to-day navigating life.

As a result, we learned to adapt quickly, to get to know people and to determine who to trust and who not to. Of course, these quick assessments occasionally proved incorrect but eventually we learned that the social connection was important enough to risk getting hurt by the betrayal of a high school friend.

Because we were all we had, in a setting where outside influence was virtually non-existent, we connected with people. Only some of these connections ended up being enduring but as I said, we were all we had. So I learned to open up and let others get to know me and me get to know them, quickly. And as a result, the connections we forged were hugely significant to us.

It was all very new to me, having grown up in one town my whole school life. But I adapted and developed relationships with people from all cultures, from all over the United States and the World, with some of the most amazing people I’d ever known.

Then came the phenomenon known as “summer rotation.”

The standard accompanied tour (where military member was assigned to a base with his or her family) was three years and rotations were generally scheduled for the summer to minimize the disruption to the kids of the military member. I had arrived in June of 1976 and by the following June, I had made friends who had become hugely important to me. I learned I had to make myself vulnerable to others, who likewise did the same with me. It was really quite amazing and I haven’t experienced anything like it, before or since.

However, when June of 1977 rolled around, these people with whom I’d grown very close started leaving, heading back to “the world.” We talked about staying in touch and some of us even did...for a while. But while letters may have started out fairly regularly, they eventually diminished to the point where these close friends were no longer part of our lives.

I remember one departure that hit me particularly hard. There were twin sisters -- Allison and Beth -- with whom I’d grown close. While both were good friends, I was particularly close to Beth. They were a year older and Beth had been a great friend, helping me navigate not only the bizarre social situation in which I’d found myself, but also the normal boy-and-girl dymanic that all high school kids go through. While I had a huge crush on Beth, she didn’t feel the same way but that did not prevent her from being a great friend to me, helping me navigate this life that was so new and foreign.

So in early June of 1977, I convinced my parents to drive me the 45 minutes to the terminal from which Allison and Beth would be departing. I had dinner with their family while my parents went off shopping or something, then I said goodbye to them at the terminal.

On the way home, I was inconsolable. I had never experienced something like this, a loss so significant that it felt as though I’d lost a limb. Of course part of this was due to the fact that I was a hormonal 14-year old boy but it was devastating nonetheless.

My parents tried to console me, to no avail. How could they possibly understand the magnitude of my loss?!? Never mind the fact that they had experienced far more significant losses in their lives; it was the first time I’d had to deal with something like this and I was wholly unequipped to handle it.

Poppi then said something to me that at the time I held as blasphemous but that later I came to understand. He held up his right hand, all five fingers extended. “If over the course of your life, you can count the number of close relationships you have on one hand, you’ll be very fortunate.” While the prima facie stupidity of his comment rang loudly and clearly at that moment, I discovered that in this case (as in most others), the older I got, the smarter Poppi became.

I sobbed my way back home, then sobbed my way to sleep that night and probably through a few days, before life returned. More friends left but none were as painful as that first time. I eventually learned to deal with this unfairness and said my goodbyes quickly, like ripping a bandage off a still healing wound. But the wounds did, in fact, heal.

As I mentioned, this dynamic was all new to me. Many of the people there were used to this odd cycle of connection and loss, repeated every year. It was their normal. But for me it was still new and odd. I discovered, too, that it wasn’t any better when I was the one to leave the pack. When it came my time to return to the “world,” I discovered that I felt completely unmoored when I got back. I sought the type of connections we had in Germany and they just weren’t there. I discovered later that I wasn’t alone, that the reentry following Hahn was jarring and difficult for many of us.

It’s hard to explain to someone who has never had the experience. But it certainly shaped how I have interacted with people ever since, for good and sometimes not-so-good.

Of course for every rotation out, there were rotations in. As old friends would depart, new ones would arrive and we learned quickly that strangers in the hallway or on the football field were just friends we hadn’t yet gotten to know. Friends who would very quickly become indispensible part of our lives.

And this is when I met Diane.

After my first year there and having experienced one full cycle of being the new guy, learning to connect, then learning to say goodbye, I was a seasoned vet. I remembered very well the challenge of being dropped into a new social setting and having to quickly adapt. So as others arrived, I tried to be as welcoming as possible.

Of course the career military brats were used to it. But those of us who hadn’t spent our entire lives on one military base or another were a smaller subset of the larger group. We were experiencing this all for the first time.

Diane was one of these. Her brother, Rick, was a history teacher and took on the responsibility as the football coach my second (junior) year there. He and his wife, Susan, were from Dallas, Texas and he had taken a job teaching high school at the base, wanting to experience more culture than what they found in Dallas.

Diane convinced her mother that she, too, needed to expand her horizons and asked to spend a year with Rick and Susan in Germany. She had been born and raised in Dallas and had never lived anywhere else. And while the details of this negotiation is Diane’s story to tell, suffice it say that her perseverance paid off and she arrived in Germany in August of 1977.

Having been in Diane’s shoes just a year prior, I was eager to welcome the outsider, the young girl who had spent her entire non-military life in one place, now faced with the daunting challenge of living in a foreign country with a brand new group of people.

Diane told me that I was the first person she met at Hahn. She said I walked up to her, introduced myself, and even walked her to her first class once school started. As I mentioned, I could empathize with her situation, having been the new kid just twelve months earlier, so I wanted to be helpful.

The fact that she was a beautiful young Texas sweetheart might’ve had something to do with it. After all, I was a hormonal 15-year old boy at the time.

Diane and I dated for about a month, though “dating” might be too strong a word for the romantic relationships in Germany. Almost none of us had cars and the opportunities to socialize were pretty rare. Neither Diane nor I lived on base with the majority of our classmates so most of the time we spent together was in school or just after. If we could coordinate rides to take us home, we would stay around after school, but there weren’t many real dates.

After about a month, we drifted apart (neither of us can remember why) and we went our separate ways. We remained friends and still saw each other in social settings regularly. When she left at the end of the ten months, tears were shed and addresses exchanged. Unlike most of cases, we actually did exchange at least one letter or card. But as with most cases, we eventually drifted apart and we lost contact completely sometime in 1978.

Yes, I know I haven’t yet addressed your question, “What’s so special about Diane?” I’m getting there. After all these years you know perfectly well that I simply cannot go directly to my elbow without first circumnavigating my ass. So be patient.

OK...flash forward some 39 years. The world has changed significantly since 1978, particularly in the world of technology. I actually joined The Facebooks and began seeing and reconnecting with some of my old high school chums.

Some are just as they were when we parted, frozen in a place in time where life made sense and the connections we forged there were the foundation stones of our lives.

Others had seemingly blocked that time from their memory banks altogether.

Some spent years afterwards trying to find their place in the world, settling in Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand.

We were a diverse bunch, politically, racially, socially, economically, but we continued to share a connection that even after all those years remained unbroken. We shared that common experience. We were -- and we remain -- Hahn.

On December 31, 2016, I received a Facebook message from one such name from my past:

“Well hello there Joe! Do you remember me from my one year stint in Hahn?”

It was Diane.

Now keep in mind the timing of all this. This came right on the heels of The Lesbian Situation. I cannot understate the impact of that on my life. While intellectually understanding that it didn’t necessarily reflect a rejection of me, it’s difficult not to take it that way. And being rejected at that level, not just for who I am but for what I am, was jarring to say the least.

So by December 31, 2016, I was at the point where I was questioning everything in my life, including everything about me. Connecting with old high school friends (and even some from when I was as young as four-years old) provided an opportunity to reflect on who I was as a man in relation to who I foresaw myself becoming when I was younger. It was like being mentally teleported back to a time when the world and all it held unfolded before me.

As I mentioned, the fact that we had been connected for a period of time four or more decades previously opened the doors to these relationships. In some cases, the opening of the door resulted in an abrupt slamming, as some of these former friends had become angry, bitter, small people. Grown adults arguing politics online, calling strangers vile names, and just generally behaving like, well, teenagers. I wanted no part of who these people had become.

Others, however, had actually grown to be really good people. Kind, intelligent, accomplished, warm, empathetic people. The kind of people I like to have in my life.

But the fact that I knew these people forty or more years ago isn’t what made me want to keep them in my life. It was because of who they had become and who they are today.

Diane is like that.

As I mentioned, we dated briefly in high school but unlike most adolescent breakups, we actually remained friends after. Not just casual, hanging out at party friends. We actually maintained a closeness, due in large part to the fact that we were both kind, empathetic people back then.

So of course the fond memories of Diane played a role in opening the door for me. But that’s not what led us to where we find ourselves today, engaged after all this time.

Though I was pretty much at emotional rock bottom on December 31, 2016, Diane retained the kindness and gentleness of spirit that I recall from all those years ago. (Note: What an odd thing for a 16-year old boy to remember about a girl...that she was kind and had a gentle spirit.) She still had those things, along with intelligence, wit, and an overall great personality.

But most of all what Diane was at the beginning was a friend.

We started chatting on The Facebooks before ultimately graduating to telephone, then Skype. Her voice sounded exactly as it had back then, with that adorable north Texas accent sneaking through despite her Mother’s best efforts to quash it. When we began Skyping, I saw that she looked exactly as she had in high school, too. Unfair when you consider that I’ve aged like a catcher’s mitt in a Florida swamp in July.

So in addition to the new, burgeoning friendship and emotional attraction, the physical attraction had survived the decades as well.

Following The Lesbian Situation, I decided I was going to leave Jacksonville just as quickly as I could find work elsewhere. I considered several areas and the best economy of the group seemed to be in the Dallas area. Since I’d not spent much time in Dallas, I decided I needed to determine if it would, in fact, suit me as my next home.

Still living in the Dallas area, Diane offered to show me around, an offer that I readily accepted. So in April I travelled to Dallas to scope it out and it was there and then that Diane and I reconnected in person.

Obviously there was a warmth and affection over the phone and on Skype but when I saw her in person after all those years, the spark struck. The story of that first reunion can be found elsewhere but we figured out pretty quickly that something romantic might be in the offing.

Obviously, I was in no emotional shape to get involved in any sort of relationship. I was, as my friend Peter said, a “soup sandwich,” a description with which I agreed, though I clarified that I was a turd-soup sandwich. A sandwich constructed by pouring turd soup on bread. Decidedly unpretty. Fortunately I had a great therapist and close friends like Peter and Craig to help me walk through all of this toward the sanity that must surely lie beyond.

And Diane was right there, alongside my other friends, encouraging me to strip away all of the old baggage so that I could move forward with my life as a stronger, better man. Not with any ulterior motive; she was simply being the kind, gentle-spirited friend she had always been.

As time went on, we spoke more and more, eventually making our Skype conversations a nightly event. We wrapped up our days by talking and laughing, mainly at the absurdity of life. In July she came to Florida for her first ever visit to “Palmetto Bug and Humidity” state. Our affection grew, though I was still in full-on recovery mode.

By the fall, I began feeling like I was emerging from a fog. It was probably early October -- more than 14 months since the onset of The Lesbian Situation -- that I actually began feeling like a whole person. I was writing again, a sure sign to me that I had emerged from the turd-soup chrysalis in which I’d been encased.

I took another trip to Dallas, this time not just to check out the area but to visit Diane. By this time it had become clear that despite my intention to relocate to the Dallas area, employers were not cooperating. So it looked like I was going to end up in Jacksonville for the foreseeable future after all.

As I said, The Lesbian Situation resulted in me taking a long, hard look at my life and what mattered to me. I stripped away all artifice and decided who I was and who I wanted to be. By this point, I’d gotten really used to living by myself, coming and going as I pleased, with only Zoe’s feelings to consider. I developed a routine that worked for me and I became stronger every day. I was perfectly fine all by myself day-to-day.

This new view of life reached its apex on Thanksgiving 2017. About a week before, it was clear that there would be no family around and that I wouldn’t be spending time with friends. So the question came to me: What was I going to do for Thanksgiving?

The answer was perhaps the most powerful and liberating thought I’ve ever had in my entire 56 years on this planet. It came to me, crystal clear and fully formed, as though the words physically erupted from the mouth of God himself, directly into my soul.

What was I going to do for Thanksgiving?

Whatever the hell I wanted.

And I did. I smoked a turkey and beef ribs. I ate pumpkin pie for an appetizer and dessert. I literally had no face-to-face contact with another living soul. I was truly and completely at peace with myself in the world, and needed no one else to guide my way.

And it was at that point that I decided this was exactly how I was going to live the rest of my life. I was going to do whatever the hell I wanted. I wasn’t going to ask for anyone else’s approval or acceptance. I know clearly who I am as a man and while I still rely on the input of the friends in my life, I don’t need anyone else’s approval. I will henceforth chart my own path and live the life I want to live, discarding anyone from it who attempts to judge me or direct my actions.

And once I came to that realization, I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Diane.

See, when I decided I was going to spend the rest of my life doing whatever the hell I wanted to, that didn’t mean that I was going to be a self-obsessed, pleasure-seeking asshole. That’s not who I am at my core. I am a kind, generous person. I had always had a soft spot in my heart for the underdog and the outcast and now I’ve decided that I am going to fight for those who can’t fight for themselves. And I am going to be kind and generous and warm and giving and I didn’t care if I get hurt a thousand times, I’d still rather be true to myself and be vulnerable than to live another day as a cynic.

Diane feels the same way and lives her life accordingly. Just as she was all those years ago, she remains kind and sweet, with a gentle spirit and a giving servant’s heart.

So what’s so special about Diane? She’s an amazing woman, warm and kind and nonjudgmental. She’s compassionate and cares about other people, not just in theory but in her actions. She’s intelligent and insightful and warm and witty. She doesn’t care to change me or judge me for the way I choose to live my life. She just loves me for who I am and for who I am trying to become.

I love her for all these reasons and more that I discover every day. And because I love her, I am going to marry her and we’re going to spend the rest of our time on Earth doing what we can, in our own way, to make this planet a little bit better every day.

So that’s what’s so special about Diane.

And the fact that she is still a beautiful young Texas sweetheart might have something to do with it. After all, I’m still a hormonal 15-year old boy at heart.