Love Letters winners: Together 29 years after an unlikely start

‘SWEET TOMATO’ There’s serendipity in a love story; chance, wisdom and discovery.“I can’t believe it, I’m a stepchild! How awful is that!” said one.“Why can’t I have any say in the decisions that affect my life,” said the other.Our marriage certificate, which represented our hopes and dreams for the future, was a death certificate — a declaration of war to my teenagers.I had been a fly-by-the-seat of my pants, single Mom, ruled by the tyranny of the urgent. If a man crossed my path and asked if I had any children, I said, “12, 12 and 12 months.”Chance: Brad, a never-married engineer who had sworn off dating, dreamed about the woman on the La Bella San Marzano tomato sauce can. The next day he met me, a dead ringer for the blue-eyed, brunette under the heavy, gold crown inlaid with Roma tomatoes. He asked me out. A relationship began.When I met Brad, he was working through a self-prescribed improvement program using Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues. Eventually, Brad asked all of us out for dinner. Surrounded by a toddler dunking her napkin furiously in his water with one hand and emptying sugar packets with the other and teenagers lobbing conversational grenades hitting the mark, squarely on target, he was paralyzed. Brad took this as an opportunity to practice Benjamin Franklin’s virtue of tranquility; “be not disturbed at trifles or accidents common or unavoidable.”After a two-year courtship, we tied the knot. It was not a decision entered into lightly; Brad made a list of pros and cons. There was not one reason under the pros. Percy Sledge is right, “When a man loves a woman he will trade the world for what he’s found,” and ask, “Why?” afterward. Benjamin Franklin, himself, weighed in with, “It’s best to keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half shut afterwards.”Wisdom: We joined a step-parenting support group, surrounding ourselves with wise people. We learned that it takes 6-8 years to blend a family.Discovery: I discovered that it was possible for me to burn my ships like Hernando Cortez when he arrived to conquer Mexico. The kids and I were not turning back. The kids discovered that not only I loved them and that they loved me, but Brad was lovable, too. Brad discovered that he was home when his feet stuck to the kitchen floor, the best antidote to sibling rivalry is a common enemy, and never leave home without a Band-Aid in your wallet.But this is just the self-sacrificing mechanics of family life, what each of us discovered was the lessons we learned and the feats we accomplished changed each of us so profoundly that we do no longer recognize ourselves in the mirror. The other night in the stillness, Brad leaned over and pulled me close, “Honey, before I met you, I was just waiting for life to happen, now it happens all the time.”