After Kathleen and I split up I spent many a lonely weekend up at my lakefront condo. I spent many nights making sure every local watering hole showed a healthy profit! That is until I decided to do something so far out of my comfort zone that it made me shudder.

What happened next turned out to be the simplest but most pivotal decision of my life. Who knew the simple act of buying a newspaper would be the best decision I ever made. I turned to the personals and landed on one that intrigued me enough to pick up the phone. It said “44 year old WWWF”. I remember thinking “I don’t know exactly what that means, but let’s find out?”

Susan and I had a nice, lengthy first conversation and the rest, as they say, is history! We bonded over a mutual love of family.  I told her that I was an honest, straight shooting beer and pizza kinda guy. That seemed to spark her interest and we decided to get together for dinner. When we agreed to meet at a Dunkin Donuts, I knew I would be meeting a kindred spirit as nobody loved their ice-cold Dunks coffee more than I.

We then headed downtown to Jacob Marley’s for dinner. We a very nice time and agreed to stay in touch. Unfortunately, life and business travel intruded and we didn’t reconvene until Labor Day weekend. But it was well worth the wait. Susan came up to the lake condo for the weekend. It was a magical time of swimming, soaking in the hot tub, dinners out and wonderful conversation! Before I knew it we were dating steadily and heading towards a very nice place.

I thought everything was fine but unbeknownst to me, Susan thought we were moving too fast. She tells the story about having a conversation with a friend at work and telling her that she would have a talk with me that weekend about slowing things down. Her friend ran up to her when she walked into work Monday morning and asked her how it went? Susan’s reply was priceless when she said “great we’re engaged!”

It is 22 years later and we are still every bit as in love as we were on the day we met!

Keith Guernsey is retired and living on Lake Lanier with his lovely wife Susan and his four-footed son Harley (who really is the king of this castle!). An interesting article about the author is here: Cresswind resident Keith Guernsey walks his weight off.For more,  please visit us on the web at; https://moms-favorite-reads.com/moms-authors/keith-guernsey/

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