Once upon a time....

Once upon a time...

Back before meeting and dating someone you met via the Internet was acceptable...

There existed a man and woman destined to meet and fall in love. This is also a journey that almost never happened...

Having been back in the singles world for roughly 4 years...I was tired of dating. I was a single mom of 2 teenagers...worked 2 jobs...was a volunteer firefighter and first responder...and was sick of going through the obligatory and repetitious first dates that continuously left me feeling that there had to be someone who held the same passion for life that I held. I was so tired of the same old boring and dull men, that I had decided I was going to take a break form the dating scene. I wanted to just take a nice breather so I didn't end up being a bitter old spinster. That was...until I met Craig.

In late February of 2002, I received my first email from a gentleman who was looking for a friend to "introduce" him to life in North Carolina. This gentleman was Craig Francis Sanders.

He introduced himself as being 6'2", British and a biker...and sent a picture of him sitting on his custom bike. As I looked at his picture, all I thought was..."British biker?! That's an oxymoron...there's no such thing as a British biker!". I loved the way he looked...but then again, how many of us girls don't love bad-boys?! As I continued to stare at his picture...trying to imagine this big, tattooed, burly looking guy having a British accent...I just couldn't imagine why he would want anything to do with me. I wasn't a biker chic and was actually intimidated by bikers. I had already been down the bad-boy road and wasn't fond of ever visiting it again...and besides, I had just sworn off dating...so I deleted the e-mail.

A week later...on a Friday...I received my 2nd e-mail from him. Well, I thought, at least he was persistent! :-) After receiving this email, I decided to write him back...and if nothing else, we could end up being friends. I then sat down and wrote him. With it being a Friday morning...and me somehow managing to have the weekend off...I gave him my home phone number and my cell phone number and asked him to just give me a call when he was free. I, then, waited to hear back from him...checking my e-mails every once in a while in the event he felt more comfortable writing me back instead of calling. Friday came and went...nothing. Saturday...nothing! Sunday...nothing!! I thought he must either be this real big jerk or I wrote something that he didn't like in my email to him. So, on Monday morning...as I am getting ready to go to work...I am re-reading my email to him just to see if there was something that he could have misconstrued...and I couldn't find anything. Until...I happened to notice the email address I sent it to. His was "limeybarstard"...I sent it to "limeybastard"!

I immediately sent an apologetic email...with the original email attached...and within 30 minutes he responded back, laughing at my mistake yet still interested in finding that "friend" to help him acclimate himself into the North Carolina life. We spent the rest of the day emailing back and forth to each other...him calling me on his lunch break...him calling me at work (I was a manager with Wendy's at the time) just to see how my evening was going...and then me calling him when I got home from work (which was 3:30am) and talking until 6am, when he had to get in the shower and get ready for work. This pace of communication continued all week long...with my hoping that we would meet face to face that upcoming weekend. Imagine my disappointment when he wanted to wait because his father was in town (from England) and he didn't feel that it would be right to leave his Dad all alone while we went out. Well...little did he know...Nancy usually gets what Nancy wants (lmao)...and we finally made plans to meet that Sunday for breakfast (with his Dad being very supportive in our meeting). 14 hours later we parted...both of us knowing that we found something very special and with plans for me to come down to his place in Mooresville (I was living in Mars Hill at the time), meet his Dad, and stay the weekend with him.

I could go on and on about how we spent the next week with the phone glued to our ears...how honored I was to have that weekend with Craig's dad (for he passed away not too long after our meeting)...and how, after seeing his dad off at the airport), Craig got down on one knee and proposed to me, but I will save that for another day.

For a relationship that "almost" didn't happen...it was the most amazing, loving, fun-filled, heart-warming, adventurous time of my life. One that I will forever be grateful for and never understand why it ended to soon.