In February 2004 I (Zsofiaklara) unsubscribed from the website
because of a long relationship that ended badly. Yet, within six weeks,
I was back, subscribed again. It was definitely an Act of Faith. I
clearly remember telling myself, “Now I’ll choose a very wide search
category, and I’ll glance at the first four or five profiles. If he
isn’t there, I’ll stop searching.”
I sent a few smiles, offered a few friendships, and within two days
(April 29), I got The Answer. The only one. It was written in the most
beautiful poetic language I’ve ever read in a letter addressed to me.
After my second smile, his second Catholic Match message was a Sonnet,
written by him. I myself am a poet, and a lover of sonnets, so I
urgently had to get his address–-and I did!
We began a lively and
exciting daily email correspondence, gradually discovering that we are
both aspiring writer-saplings (a phrase coined by myself… :-)), we both
come from a family of five children, we were both born on the
twenty-second, our mutual favorite color is dark blue, we both like
roses, lilies and flowers in general, horses, cemeteries, ghost
stories, the sea, Northern gloom and autumn landscapes. (Of course,
this is by no means a full list, which would be practically
impossible…)
I was preparing to get my Ancient Greek Philology and Linguistics
degree, without any chance of future employment, and doing odd jobs as a
home translator (German and English), and he was similarly Quixotic,
making ends meet at his countryside farmhouse, working as a farmer,
later as a journalist, writer, teacher, editor, salesman, taxi driver
and painter. In other words, a true poet. We were 6,000 miles (and a few
hundred dollars) away from one another, and more than two years had
passed when we finally met in his enchanting mother-country, Ireland.
We had our first meeting on the 25th of August, 2006, at Shannon. We
both recognized each other at the first glance--and on that very day,
we exchanged our first kiss. Three months passed, with both of us having
enough adventure for two screenplays and a collection of short stories.
On the 3rd of December, after the mid-day Mass in a wonderful 19th
century church dedicated to the Holy Virgin, he asked me to marry him.
I said yes. I didn’t get emotional at all--contrary to my nature--my
only idea was that this was what I’d been waiting for.
He is exactly the strong, peaceful, bear-type man I have been looking
for. I’m charmed by his artistic handwriting–- he is left-handed, with
a matching intuitive, impulsive nature—yet studious enough to have
learned to be ambidextrous. I’m crazy about his smile and his
mischievous laughter, his verbal and nonverbal skills and his way of
using his voice. I’m often amazed to see how much better he knows me
than I do myself–-at least he seems to understand my bad moments
better than me. He is my most patient audience and my best critic–-even
if I don’t always listen to him, alas! I love his natural, healthy
religiousness. And I love the idea of spending all my life together
with him. And if I sometimes find him a big boy who needs some
mothering, he has proven so often to me that he will be, as Andromache
said of her husband, Hector,
"... So Hector, you are now
my father, noble mother, brother,
and my protecting husband. ..."
I’m a melancholy personality in many ways, shy, private,
imaginative, intense. A Dreamer. (He tells me that "A Dreamer lives
forever.") He’s much more the gregarious, sanguine type—and yet,
somehow, deep down, we match each other in ways neither of us foresaw.
And we’re both writers, both artists, both poets. My friends and family
all warned me he could not possibly be the same in person as he was in
his writing, but in this one case, at least, the "common" wisdom was
uncommonly wrong. God works through his instruments, his angels and his
people on earth. Catholic Match, via its staff, and its Patron, St.
Raphael, brought my love and me together. Our wedding will be one day
before our third virtual meeting anniversary, April 28, 2007.
Life won’t be easy, but then it’s just an intense writers’ workshop for that Heavenly word-weaving to come, right?
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