Sue Lynn

Sometimes it seems that my whole life pivots around Sue Lynn.

She was the beautiful girl who popped my eyes wide when she smiled at me. She smiled because she mistook me for my best friend, but I didn't care. I wanted more of those smiles.

Sometimes life works out. Before long we were an item, a couple. We weren't going steady but we might as well have been. And then we were, and we might as well have been engaged.

She went to college at NMSU because I was there, and we continued to date monogamously except for one short break. No one was surprised when I asked her to marry me, only that it took me so damned long! She accepted. We got married the summer after I turned twenty-one.

Geeminey Christmas! I said she was beautiful, and she was. She was vivacious, flirty, bright, funny on purpose when she wanted to be. Other guys sat up or stood a little straighter when she entered a room. One guy told me, "You don't deserve anyone like her." I didn't. But she chose me and we persisted.

We got married and, oops! Had a son! Dang!

When I graduated, I needed a job. Fortunately, those were the good ole days when the government was afraid of Communists, so they kept us employed and busy. Good thing! We soon had another son. But this isn't about me, it's about Sue Lynn. She was indeed beautiful, vivacious, flirty, bright, and funny. She was a damned good cook, a damned good homemaker, brilliant at making a budget work. If anything, she was a better wife than a girlfriend!

And she made and kept friends. Not me. When I moved, I made a new set of friends. Some of my old friends kept up with me and I was damned lucky there. But they just may have hung in there with me partly for proximity to Sue Lynn.

So why did I ever let her go? Well, Cupid or something like him. In any case, I ended the marriage.

But, Holy Toledo! Sue Lynn insisted on our having a relationship after the divorce. A good relationship! And we have.

We may be better friends now than we were while married. I have admired how she raised our three kids, how she bought and sold houses, how she managed friendships and relationships, how she involved herself in the feminist movement, how she demanded respect and admiration from men too dumb to give it readily.

Whatever else happens in my life, Sue Lynn is there, for me. Sometimes being for me is telling me when I'm being stupid. Often she encourages and supports me.

She's special.