Want to know a secret?

Since I've been very young I have always been very attracted and enamored by depressed, dark, bitter and angry men. I won't go into details but I have a pattern that I could (actually) write another book about. I find angry men a challenge. I think depressed men are ones I can fix and make happy - such a delightful undertaking... the more bitter and mean, the better. I imagine I could play crack psychologist to figure out why this is true, but there is no explanation. I'm friendly enough. I don't have a fatherly complex (I don't think) and yet I always find a way to have men in my life who are bossy, and tirelessly willing to make me feel as though there is something really wrong with me - you know, like shit. It doesn't matter whether I've worked with them, they are extended family members, or if they are friends of family members or friends of friends - if they are mean and nasty, I like 'em. No. I just don't like 'em...

I love 'em.

I met Bruce when I was eighteen. He is never angry or bitter. He doesn't criticize or berate. He doesn't confront. Not only that, he never has a problem with me and honors me as if I am a perfect specimen of a woman ---which is a big joke. I have issues on my issues and am an extremely complicated human. He puts up with all kinds of ridiculous illustrations of neediness that would make most men cringe. He doesn't care. I have no idea why I was lucky enough to cross paths with some "boy" from McKeesport, Pa when I was so young whose family is nothing like my own. My grandfather was the President of a college and his grandfather quit school to work in a mill in the sixth grade. He is Jewish - well not really, but he was raised that way and has some Lox/Smoked Fish connections still. Through the years, I haven't a notion as to why we are married considering the obvious polar distance of our needs and background. We are intellectual opposites and have different politics and social mores.

However, I am now in awe of my luck of the draw as a little girl. In the long scheme of things the most important thing two people have in common is family. Amidst the myriad of differences (which has never made any sense to me) there is the one thing we share: a deep abiding family value.

So for as much as I should have probably married a dark, angry, nasty man whom I would have divorced twenty years back, I was one lucky lady. Sometimes what you are drawn to isn't so good for you.

I'm not so sure I believe in fate. I certainly don't believe in marriages made in heaven - that's for sure. But this relationship of ours was a freaking miracle of nature, which has lasted for over forty-two years.

Maybe because we share so little is why we share so much.