The Simple Life of a Cowboy and His Lady

Her life had begun quite simple enough. She was born on a quiet summer evening to a couple that already had seven children. She was number eight. She was what they called a change of life baby. She was a baby born to a woman on the verge of "the change" we all know as menopause. She was healthy and had a head full of hair.

From the hospital to home was a simple transition. They all went home and all of the older children helped to care for the new baby girl that Mom and Dad had brought home. The baby grew and for the most part was raised in a simple life. Home was a small farm that only had stock and gardens to feed the family.

The baby grew into a young woman. High school had been a tough experience. Kids can be extremely cruel. They heartlessly teased her. She didn't wear the right clothes. She didn't have the right hair. She didn't think the right things. She didn't treat others the way others were treating her. It wasn't because she was afraid. It was because she had a conscience.

She attended church and soon became a youth minister herself. In that time she met a young man that she thought would be the man that she would spend the rest of her life with. Going against her own better judgment, she let the relationship progress beyond what it ever should have been without the benefit of "marriage". This was something she knew her church would look down on. She did it anyway, so as not to lose the man that she thought loved her.

Then it happened. She had been ill and had missed her cycle for an entire month. The man had already left her. She went to the doctor. There was the proof. It was written on a piece of paper that she held crumpled in her hand as she walked up to his door. She knocked. He answered. She said, "We need to talk." He ushered her inside.

"I'm pregnant. I felt you should know," was all she said at first. She felt it was enough. She had never been with anyone else in their entire time together, nor after they had been apart.
"Are you sure it is mine?" he asked.

Her heart shattered. She had been so shocked to hear that question she immediately jumped to the defensive. "Nope. There is no father. It is an Immaculate Conception! Just like the Virgin Mother of the bible. Who knows? Maybe it is the next Messiah!"

She jumped up from her chair and walked out. From time to time he would come by or call. After the baby boy had been born he stopped to see him a few times. Then he left town. It was just her and her baby now.

The church had all but abandoned her. You see, they didn't believe in abortion, and neither did she to be truthful. Nor did they believe in "fornication". Having a baby while you are a single woman is PROOF that you committed that particular sin, and evidently you cannot get forgiveness for it.

She had a lot of friends in high school, and most had stood beside her through her disastrous relationship with the man. But then the baby was born. You can't party with a baby. You can't go clubbing with a diaper bag. You can't go to your friends' homes if it isn't baby proof, because in truth they really don't want you and your baby there to begin with. You cramp their style.

So she had no church, no friends, as having trouble finding a job and was on the brink of exhaustion all the time. She didn't know what made her do it. She was just out driving, and found that she really wanted someone to talk to that would understand. She stopped at a house that she hadn't been at since her senior year of high school. It was the home of one of her dearest high school friends. This was someone who always "got her". The young woman knew her friend had moved out of state. She knew she wouldn't be there. But she still got out of her car, unloaded her son from his car seat, and went to the door and knocked before she changed her mind. Her friend's mother answered the door. They talked for hours, the new mother and the veteran mother.

Within a few months, the young woman had enrolled in a College program. She was going to school on grants, and taking care of her son. Things were looking up. She was doing better. She was feeling better about herself. She was going to be able to provide for her son.

Then one afternoon, she had extra lab work she had to finish for class. She had to pick her son up at five, which was about twenty minutes away. She called her friend's mother and found out she could do her lab work there. They had the necessary software on their home computer. So that was where she went after picking up that handsome little boy at the sitter's house.

She finished the lab work relatively easily. Then she visited for a bit, and admitted that she really was not ready to go home. The friend's mom turned on their computer, and signed onto the internet. She sent the young woman to a website that would let her look up people like her. The friend's mother then told her, "Stay as long as you like. You know how to let yourself out."

The young woman quickly got lost browsing the website. She found a lot of people that she could chat with. Then she came across a profile that caught and held her attention. He reminded her of one of her best friends. When she read his comments, she laughed out loud. He seemed interesting enough. She saw he was online. She sent him a message. She lost track of time. Her son was asleep on the daybed in the room with her. Before she realized it she had talked to this man all night.

The sun was coming up when she told him she had to go. He asked her if he could call her sometime. She said, "I will give you a number to page me at. How about you let me decide if I am ready to take that step when you page me? We just met tonight online. I am not sure I am ready to give that personal information yet." He agreed that would be a fine solution.
She signed off, and picked her sleepy eyed son. She locked the front door behind her as she left to drive home. She was halfway through her fifteen minute drive home when her pager went off. It was him. He was paging already. She smiled as she saved the number.

She got home and tucked her son in his own bed where he continued to sleep for a while. She picked up the phone and called the man that called himself the Oklahoma Cowboy. She had started out in a simple life and then all of a sudden it had all gotten complicated, and here she was talking to a simple man that she never would have thought herself to be attracted to. She found that conversation with him really made her feel like what she had to say mattered.

He treated her differently than any other man had ever treated her. All the others that had come and gone through her life only seemed interested in her for that one "biblical" reason. This man actually listened, understood, and cared about her, not because she might or might not sleep with him, but because she really thought like him. They could finish each other's sentences. It was all so amazing. If she didn't know better, she would have sworn that they had known each other their whole lives.

They continued to talk to each other every chance they got, on the internet, and on the telephone. Then he told her that he would be coming to her home town, and he wanted to meet her. Honestly, she wanted to meet him too. People had warned her about things that could happen when you meet someone who you only knew through the internet. But she had faith, and a friend who was a cop just in case. She agreed to meet him.

He arrived in the middle of the night on a cold Friday night in December. She met him on neutral ground with her police friend not far behind. The cowboy had no idea that they were being watched. They talked for a bit in the parking lot, and then she showed him where his hotel was.

The whole weekend was magical for her. She had always thought that she wanted to move away from her home town to a major metropolitan area, and have a huge high salary career, the high earning husband, and the "jet-set" life. But this man was nothing like that, and she found that when it was time for him to leave, she wanted him to stay. The shock was that he wanted to stay. He didn't want to leave her. But he had to.

As he drove off that Sunday night, her heart was in her throat. She was afraid that she would never see him again. She really wanted to see him again. She didn't know why. He was nothing like she was usually attracted to, but maybe that was a good thing. Their communication over the internet and on the telephone continued.

She asked him what he wanted for Christmas, one night in a phone conversation. He got real quiet on the other line. She heard him take a deep sigh. The tension was almost thick enough to cut with a knife.

"I can't have what I really want, so it doesn't matter," was his quiet reply.

"How do you know you can't have it, if no one knows you want it?" she asked in a teasing manner, hoping to lighten his mood.

"Because it would be too expensive," he stated with a sense of finality.

"Please tell me." She really wanted to know now. He sounded so sad that he wouldn't be able to have it.

"I want you to come to Oklahoma. I want to show you where I live. I really want to see you and that boy of yours again. It is almost like a physical pain I want it so bad." The tone of his voice told her he was being sincere.

Money was tight for her, and he did know that. When you have a child and you are a full time student living off of your school grants, money is kind of already budgeted out to cover school expenses and supplies and childcare. But she knew something he didn't. She knew she would have the money to do it around Christmas. She would have enough to get to Oklahoma on the bus. She didn't say anything to him that night about it. She just told him how much she missed him too, and how badly she would love to make his Christmas wish come true.

The next day she called his mother and told her what he had said. The cowboy's mother agreed to pick her up at the bus station so that they could give him his Christmas present. The tickets were bought about a week later. The plan was on.

The young woman made it to Oklahoma for her cowboy. They had a glorious holiday. She was so happy with her cowboy right there next to her that she really didn't want to get back on that bus. But she had school to finish and so did he. She had to go back.

Time passed and the couple stayed in contact. Then on Valentine's Day, she asked him if he would be her Valentine. He said of course he would. She smiled to herself while she stared at the computer screen all day at school. Then she went straight back to the internet that night, and waited for him to sign on.

POP! There he was. He logged on.

He typed:

I was hoping you would be on here.

She typed:

Where else would I be? You know I live for our nightly chats.

He typed:

I have a question for you.

She typed:

Ask away.

He typed:

Will you marry me?

Her fingers froze on the keys. Was he for real? They lived so far apart. Where would they live? What about her son? Would he be willing to raise another man's child? Would he stay with her? Would he leave her like all the others? Would he love her enough to keep her and all her baggage for life?

Her friend's mother was there. That is who helped her to make the decision.

"Do you love him?" she asked the young woman.

"Yes I do. More than I would have ever thought was possible for me," was her answer.

"Do you accept him with all of his faults and baggage?" the veteran mother asked.

"Of course I do. All of that makes him who he is," she answered.

"Sounds like you have your answer. You just have to have the courage to say it and follow through." The veteran mother walked out of the room on that note.

She typed to her cowboy:

YES! I WILL MARRY YOU!

In two weeks time he was there, and they packed the young woman and her son up and moved to Oklahoma. The cycle had become complete for the young woman. She had begun a simple life, on a simple afternoon. She had been born to simple parents. She lived a simple way all of her childhood. When she became an adult, everything had gotten complicated and confusing. Then she found the missing piece to her puzzle. The Oklahoma was a perfect and simple fit.

The jet-set life she always dreamed of was really far away from what she lives now. There aren't even red lights in their home town. They had two more children together, and now live a simple farm life, with enough stock and gardens for their family. Their three children are being raised in a simple life, by simple parents. They are getting older. The Oklahoma Cowboy and his still-blushing bride are about to have one leave the nest. I wonder if that boy whose father left him for a dad to raise, is ready for it to get complicated before it gets simple, again.