2001 – 2003
What followed was a week of discoveries about each other, including some steamy exchanges. By the time we arranged to meet 6 days later we were both quite excited and full of anticipation. We met at La Mère Michele, a restaurant conveniently located between our two places of residence. I have such a vivid picture of Bill standing outside holding a beautiful bouquet of two dozen roses. He was so handsome and debonair. We talked and talked, laughed, discovered our similarities and ended up with a long kissing section in the car – the chemistry was definitely there!!! We continued to deepen our connection through very honest email exchanges, phone calls and fun outings.
Bill is a wonderful piano player and another way he wowed me was by free playing once in a life time, never to be repeated, incredibly beautiful songs that would bring tears to my eyes.
He also had a great talent at sending sweet, romantic messages from American Greetings.
November 21, 2001
For the next two years Bill was really good at finding fun things for us to do. In March 2002, at the age of 62, Bill ran and completed his first Marathon in 4 hours, 17 minutes and 52 seconds! I was so proud of him!!
We went on many fun adventures, Malaga in Spain to do a Spanish course, Greece to visit my sister, Amsterdam, where we drove inside a train tunnel by mistake (lucky for us no train was coming), Disneyland, Catalina, Tahoe, B&B weekends, and once, we even managed to get completely lost while hiking Mt Tamalpais!
Galant Bill climbed a hill to pick up the only budding flower in Seascape Resort ❤️
As we were getting closer and deeper I sold my home and moved to a condo in a building next to his house to see where things were going. We had a lot of fun spending nights in each other’s places. As Bill had a hard time pronouncing my name which was still Mihaela at the time, he gave me the nickname of ‘Sammy’. Eventually, the inevitable happened. In September of 2002 Bill asked me to marry him. Of course I said YES!
I love the ring he chose. He said he liked it because it looked like the diamond in the middle – me – was being hugged by two arms – his.
