Living by Principle Ch. 01

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A romance for senior citizens.
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RealDoc
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Here I am at age 75, sitting on the cemented porch of our red brick home in the southern hill country of Appalachia. This is where Appalachia and the deep south merged. This is the gentile deep south which only half a century ago was rocked by social unrest, civil disobedience and threats from old south whites and radical blacks. I'm listening to the rising and falling hum of the late summer evening Cicada. I am rocking in a Cracker Barrel brand wooden rocking chair and thinking how truly fortunate I am.

I am a white man that had been involved on the non discrimination side of America's tumultuous upheaval. I had been threatened by midnight shots into my rented house where I and my pregnant wife and small daughter lived. Another night, a cross burned in my yard while in Mississippi in the early sixties. Non of my gentile neighbors dared be seen in my company. I still had the little gift card anonymously donated to me announcing my membership in the "Nigger Lovers Society". A card I now cherished as a symbol of the crushed Ku Klux Klan.

My new wife of five years now joins me on the porch after supper. She seats herself quietly beside me, rocking now in slow cadence with me when she reaches over, placing her right hand on top of mine. My hand turns over to grasp her gently. Supper and the dishes were done. (Dinner comes in mid-day in the old south.) We are only inches apart physically but joined in an everlasting deep bond of true love. My heart warmed to her large boned warm, soft, comfortable, silky, chocolate hand. My head turns slightly to the left and a smile drifts across my face as my eyes meet her smiling and sparkling black eyes. Her teeth are white as pearls with non missing. This showing evidence of long term self care and careful hygiene. The white of her eyes shine in the evening rays in sharp contrast with her very black pupils. and surrounding deep toned skin. I feel the warmth of her love and devotion flowing across her hands and into my heart from hers. My soul stirs comfortably as she lightly squeezes my very white, thin long fingered hand. Our spirits seem to meld into the others. I welcome her into my very private space just as she welcomes me into her inner being. We each feel the caring and devoted spirit we share. Ours is the gift, yes, the reward of many years of sometimes difficult service. Ours is the reward for unswerving personal integrity to our ideals in our journeys" through life, independent of each other until our meeting about 6 years ago.

How very different we are yet how perfectly we have joined. Truly we have become one in spirit. This did not happen suddenly or by accident. Our first meeting was not orchestrated but after that, love easily conquered every barrier to our happiness. \neither of us had been politically correct in our younger dashing years. Neither had feared the retribution of a society gone awry. We didn't care then so we can care for each other now. It was the principles of love and mutual respect that governed our lives independently and now in relationship. We carried into this marriage a history of lifelong previous loving commitments and fidelity to our first partners in life. Through thick and thin, from poverty relative affluence. We had shared the deep loss of our first loves. When these were broken by deaths, we had both fulfilled our promises of "only death shall part us". Now we were living a new life partnership in perfect trust born of a lifetime of an experience in that same type relationship...only with different partners.

The warm late summer evening reflects our position in life. The coming sunset promises yet another spectacular display of God's artistry. The rays slip past the tall southern short leaf pines casting their lengthening shadows. Slowly and quietly they move parallel shadows cross our rural yard and crushed stone driveway. In the distance we hear a motorcycle hurrying to nowhere on the county road some quarter mile away. We are isolated in our retirement years home. No longer do we feel the need to accomplish. We remembered the urban life with its bustle and deadlines we had shared independent of the other for so many years.

We sense that this moment is one of our special moments. The pastel colored sky reflects our being. We are filled with warmth, comfort and security. Life, even in our senior years has never been better for us. Each of us had beaten the odds and more than survived the pressures and losses dealt us by life. Our previous professional successes were part of the distant past. Seems the adversities, sent our way by life's turmoil was the prelude to the peace we now enjoyed together. We had overcome those fears and defeats, and yes the accolades, each in our own way and each in very different life circumstances. These seemingly had strengthened us so that when our paths finally crossed in our senior years, we were each prepared to not just find love and peace but to make love and companionship happen in the deepest truest sense.

What was truly important in life had finally overtaken us. We reveled in the God's gifts to us.

We had met seven years ago. She had just turned 65 and I was a young 68. She had been just another patient in the clinic where I was substituting as an Family Practitioner. It was toward the end of another long but satisfying day. Then as now, I worked only for the joy of practice and fulfillment, not for the need of money anymore. She had been sitting quietly in the exam room awaiting the doctor's appearance to refill her blood pressure prescriptions. She was prim and proper as becomes a southern lady of class.

I entered the exam room, her chart in hand, having perused it and spoken briefly with the office assistant about her. She had been a long time patient at the clinic as had her now deceased husband. The office assistant told me that she had been recently widowed from her husband. She was a retired grade school teacher turned college professor before her retirement ten years earlier.

She stood as I entered the exam room, extending a hand along with a friendly warm smile. Her face radiated warmth. Her body language told me of her courage and personal integrity. She was a full six foot two inches tall, large boned with pronounced facial features of her pure bred eastern Africa -American heritage. She was Hershey chocolate brown black and as regal as any English queen. She spoke with an educated Virginia accent and with the self assurance of her southern aristocracy heritage. I immediately knew she was broadly educated and cultured from outside the deep south black culture surrounding us. She didn't speak black nor did she even smell black. Yet she was truly black.

I knew something was profoundly different about her from the second we met. Her movements were fluid and graceful. Her handshake showed her softness yet was firm with no suggestion of being either aggressive nor passive. She radiated a calm self confidence born of conquered adversity. Her perfume was carefully chosen to provide a hint of southern lilac. She was dressed in an mid calf length silky black one piece dress with enough dip in the carefully white bordered front to conservatively display her generous D breasts which were lifted by a lace lined bra that peeked from the edges of her frontal V cut. Her hips were broad yet she was not fat. This was no ordinary black woman. She was a real lady. Her upper class Virginia heritage showed through in her accent, her educated language, her demeanor and body language.

Her six foot two frame towered above me by a good three inches even though she wore flats. She had broad facial features with hardly any wrinkles despite her age. Her African-American full lips and moderately flattened nose gave a softness to her facial features. Interestingly, she seemed interested in me as a person even though I was pure Caucasian.

She introduced herself before I could confirm her name as I always do upon entering an exam room. I liked that. Then she inquired about my health and well being wishing me God's blessings. All this took me by not a little surprise but I loved it. I normally do the doctor patient thing in a much more professional manner but she just moved right on in to a personal relationship. She did this in a way that seemed entirely appropriate and I felt absolutely no discomfort. In fact, I was quite pleased. I enjoyed her presence even before getting on with the interview concerning her office visit. Perhaps my response would best be described by an English phrase, "gob smacked".

After disposing of her need for blood pressure medicine refills, and since she was the last patient of the day with the office staff still fully engaged disposing of other doctors' patients, we sat silently facing each other for just a moment after I handed her her prescriptions. I was comfortably seated on the adjustable height exam room stool and she was in a somewhat sterile looking exam room chair. The atmosphere was more than professional. We talked of non-medical things. I discovered mutual personal interests and backgrounds. I was attracted to her in a way I had not felt since my wife had died 9 months earlier.

Her parents had insisted she learn "white manners". She had studied ballet as a youth. This accounted for her fluid movements. Her family had struggled to give her, as the only child, every educational advantage available to a black girl back when being black was difficult. She had risen to the challenge making high academic marks and good impressions with her "white mannerisms" and cultured speech.

She had an earned PhD in early childhood development from the University of Virginia. She chose to teach grade school because she loved the children she herself could never bare. Eventually she moved into administration but then went back to the classroom as she missed the interaction with "my children" as she put it. She and her husband of many years, a college professor in economics, moved down south here in northern Alabama to teach without adequate compensation in a struggling black college. Now "my children" were college students. She had moved easily from the grade school classroom to school administration to the college classroom. Her transition had been seamless as she was perfectly equipped for all three careers.

I told her of my schooling in the life sciences including the MD degree and a post graduate degree (from up east) plus multiple Board Certifications and medical school faculty appointments. I had served honorably in the Army and discharged as a major. I had three adult children all on their own but no grandchildren.

She noted the impression on my left fourth finger which remained in spite of my not wearing my wedding ring now for the past nine months. I had taken it off during my wife's funeral and placed it in her cold hand in the coffin. I had worn it continuously for just over forty years. I told her of my wife's illness and passing. She smiled in a gracious manner, leaned forward and took my hands while telling me of her husbands illness and his passing some three years earlier.

"It's the nights that are worst." she had commented. I nodded in silent almost tearful agreement. We shared the sadness born of long term loving spouses' recent deaths. We were both familiar with the deep monogamous intimacy of a committed love stressed by illness then terminated by death. I wanted to hug her and share our loss but my professional training and the clinical setting prevented this expression of our personal needs. She sensed my dilemma and responded by gently squeezing my hands together with a soft smile of true sharing our understandings.

"I understand doctor"

"and I also understand, Mrs. White."

She stood, indicating she was ready to go as I arose to stand aside to allow her to pass toward the exam room door. I opened the door for her. She stopped just inside the door and turned to me. We both felt the personal magnetic like attraction. She smiled warmly yet again. We held both hands for yet another brief moment in time; time looking into the others souls through their eyes. I could see tears forming in her eyes as I felt them in my own eyes. It was just for a moment but spoke volumes. Then she said "I have so enjoyed meeting you. You are such a genuine person. You have lifted my heart as it has not been lifted in three years. I hope you will be here next month when I come back."

I reminded her that her prescriptions were renewable for up to three months and it was unnecessary for her to return just for prescription renewal.

"I know, I looked at them, but doctor, my spirit has been lifted today. It will slide down long before next month and it will need lifting again before the prescription renewals run out." She turned to go, our lingering hands slipped apart. I felt her warmth fade as she eased out the door.

"May I call you Martha, Mrs. White?"

"Of course, Doctor. When we meet other than my being your patient, may I call you John?" I smiled widely took her hand again and with a warm squeeze, I replied, "You may call me anything you wish. Perhaps I could call you sometime?" My request brought a smile and I thought, even a blush, as she replied.

"You have my cell phone number. May I have yours so I'll know it's you who is calling when you do. I would like to hear from you."

I wrote down my cell number on a blank prescription and handed it to her. I smiled and suggested perhaps sharing a little doctor-patient time informally over a good evening meal would be good medicine for the both of us. As she received the note with my number written on it, I took her hand once again, lifted it to my face, bent her wrist and kissed the back of her soft black hand. I will always remember the smooth skin and aroma of her skin lotion. My eyes smiled over the kiss as my lips met her skin. Her smile deepened revealing her perfect bright white teeth yet again. She reached the short distance between us with her left hand and placed it on my right cheek. I felt her warmth and spirit filling me with a romantic pleasure I had long missed and almost forgotten. Then she was gone.

I felt a cool emptiness overtake me as she moved gracefully down the hall with a slight limp from her arthritic right hip. She seemed to glide to the check out counter. Her swaying hips moved sensually under the black silk dress revealing that she was still a creature endowed with sexuality and allure. Even more exciting, I felt my soul lifted from the doldrums I had been in since my soul mate had died. A most unlikely lady had somehow gently moved into my empty personal space. It had happened without my invitation yet she was more than welcome. For the first time in almost fifty years I had given in willingly to this feeling of deep attraction to a woman other than my wife.

As I drove to my empty house, my previous home. (Home to me was wherever my wife was. Now I had no wife so the structure was simply my house.) I marveled at the transformation that had overtaken me in my lifetime of training and world travels. My parents had been high class educated folks but racists to the bone. My little southern hometown was riddled with the racism which I had not recognized in public school but then began to notice once I was college. But here I was deeply attracted to this beautiful gentile sophisticated soul in a very black lady. She had endured and overcome the racism we both grew up in. Granted I had been sympathetic to the civil rights movement and had supported Dr. King Jr. at the expense of superficial professional and personal friendships in the 60's. Now I felt remorse for not being more active and supportive during the years of chaos which were the birth pangs of racial equality.

That very evening I called her and she graciously accepted my invitation to dinner the following Saturday.

Thus began our journey together.

Realdoc in Alabama

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6 Comments
JestuaJestuaover 8 years ago
You know....

I actually liked this story. It was somewhat touching, I suppose, or maybe it was just a bit uplifting. Regardless, well done.

TavadelphinTavadelphinover 10 years ago
Good for you -

True love and respect have no color codes -

Good people are good because they are - not because of what they are -

Nice story with a good ending -

No Chap2 needed

kalodinkalodinabout 13 years ago
Exquisite

First rate writing; if no grounding in real experience of yours, then you are an exceptionally imaginative and creative writer. When you drew the setting, in time and geography, I could see the end of (or beginning if you're driving north) the Apalachians up Gadsden way in Alabama. I thought of my binlaw's experience as a young M.D., in Neshoba County, Ms., in the Sixties and how he was threatened. Well, a fine beginning and hopefully you will share more of this story with us.

oldwayneoldwayneabout 13 years ago
A beautiful story of life well lived.

I'll be looking forward to the rest of the story.

AnonymousAnonymousabout 13 years ago
Keep Sharing

Good Story, close to real life for those who have learned the best way to pick your friends is with your eyes shut and your ears and heart open!

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