Just Married

I really only had two friends when I lived up in the mountains of North Carolina. I had family, but I didn't get out much other than with them, so the only two people I really got to know were my dog groomer and my people groomer. The woman who cut my hair.

Both were interesting people, but the stylist was more interesting by far.

She was a large woman with hair that was red by genetics and helped long by modern day science. she was married to a Native American who was about a decade older than she was and who was the love of her life. He had a bad heart and she worried about him all the time.

That didn't stop them from having fun though. Once a month they rode their motorcycles a hundred miles to Knoxville to party with friends who were also motorcycle afficiandos for just one night.

She bought an old house filled with what was listed as trash and managed to get three truckloads of  sell-a-ble antiques out of it to help with the remodel, which she did herself. She left the trap door in the kitchen floor. It was there from the days before electricity and refrigeration. There was a creek running under it where you could have kept milk and such.

In her spare time, she was a member of the Roller Derby, planted fairy gardens, painted Pysanky eggs and could tell you the history of each design. She made fancy hand lettered cards, jewelry, and she took every free class she could at the university while making sure her boys grew up making good grades in school and knew how to work.

This year she skimped and saved enough for her and her husband to take their first big vacation.  It was  supposed to be on their motorcycles, but he wasn't well enough for that. Instead she reconfigured it so they could camp as much as possible and followed Route 66 across the country as much as they could with a sign on their car that said, Just Married, 30 Years, July 17th. 

They have stopped at all the right places, played like they were twenty and had a ball. I think she is my new role model.