Today is a great day! Today my husband retires – we are selling our business, a business he has given heart and hard work to for 14 years. He signs the papers this afternoon and hands over his thriving center to a protege, confident that he has taught her best practices and wishing her all the best. My wonderful husband has worked hard all his life. He’s been a Navy sailor, a bus boy, a mechanic, a trucker who drove over a million safe miles, an award winning electronics tech, an uranium miner, a steam train engineer, a real estate agent, on a road crew for the State of Wyoming DOT, a carpenter, a house mover, and most recently – the owner of the two best child care centers in Cheyenne. It isn’t that everything he touches is golden. He’s had troubles and made mistakes – really, real estate is not his forte. But no matter what, he always gives everything a deep degree of consideration and insight that I admire and esteem. His brain works at the details of finance and how to satisfy his customers while nourishing and growing his employees. He THINKS about things and goes slowly and carefully. The result is that he is successful and respected.
People around him may not always agree with him, and I’ll tell you he can be stubborn and bull-headed and he doesn’t leave people wondering what he thinks when he is passionate about an issue, but everyone around him also knows that he cares and that he will always go out of his way to help someone in need.
Today he retires and tomorrow we leave Cheyenne to begin our lives as full time island dwellers. We will be “stuck on a rock” that is a sum total of 81 square miles. After the unending wide open spaces of Wyoming, we wonder if we will get ‘rock fever’ and if we will love it as much there in a year as we do now. One way or the other, I am so very thankful that I’ll be stuck on an island with this man. After 33 years of being married to him, I still can’t get enough of his company or his laughter. I sleep at night with his warmth beside me and I wake up in the morning looking forward to spending the day with him. I feel his absence even if it is for a few hours. I can’t wait for tomorrow – when I no longer have to share him with a job, when he doesn’t have to be away from me more than he isn’t. I realize that not every marriage is like ours, and I don’t take it for granted. I am thankful every day for it.
Now – there’s just one hitch. In all our years of being married, we’ve never shared a vehicle. Right now, we only have one vehicle on St. Croix. Hmmm. Love does have its limits. We’ll see how long I last with this…
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