The Chiseled Wall - An Unexpected Love Story

I just recently watched my mother fall in love. It's not often a grown child can say that, so I am grateful.

My mother has had an impenetrable wall around her heart. I have been witness to many men who tried to chisel it away with diamonds. Only to be left with blistered hands.

It is a difficult thing to reconstruct a broken heart, so my mother dove into her work. For over thirty years.

Then something magical happened. Just when my health took its turn. When she needed someone to hold her hand through what has become a mother's nightmare. She met Ron.

I never thought my mom would love a man again. Because she told me it was impossible. And I believed her. But it didn't stop me from hoping that someone would come along that could see the magnificence that is my mom. And someone my mother could see as magnificent.

Ron is a good man. Who lives a full life. He goes to the office every day. All nineteen holes of it. His view of the mountains in Palm Springs is priceless. His children are all grown - with children of their own. So he understands the act of loving a child completely, when their life is somewhere else. When all he can do is love; The most powerful force in the world, that could bring an empire to its knees. And Ron does this so well. Because he brought down my mother's wall. With baseball diamonds and shooting stars. You see, Ron is Ron Fairly, a retired professional baseball player, with genuine Dodger blood.

I have been wanting to write about Ron's career for a while. Not the one with holes. The one with baseball diamonds. I admire him. For having a dream. For living his dream. And for making my family's dream come true.

Our ten year old, Cassie May stood in my mother's living room, her fingers folding with stuttered glee. An avid Dodger fan. Ron sat and pulled out a weathered glove he used when his fingers stuttered too. She gazed at the cover he graced of Sports Illustrated, and his hands held out his World Series rings. Ron did not share these things to impress. That's not who he is. He shared this memorabilia, because it was something so real and personal to him, and he wanted Cassie May to know that she mattered as much as the world did - when he was young. And that there was something even more grand that mattered now. Her Grammy.

Ron turned seventy-five last week. Mom and Ron have dated for a year. Every day he chiseled away at her wall.

All I have ever wanted for my mother, was for her to fall in love.

Mom gave Ron a birthday dinner on Saturday. A table of closest friends. A centerpiece she planned for weeks with colors he would like. Table gifts of Major League baseballs. Twinkling Fairy Lights scattered on the cloth announced the night was dear in the circle of birthday cheer. And there was a card. With words my mother could not say since I was but a child. " I love you, Ron". And Ron knew. It was true. Her gift to him was real. As real as the glove, as the cover, as the rings. As the family he brought with him - into our broken wings.

Then I learned something new. Ron had his wall too. They were a man and a woman with a lifetime of stones - protecting the one thing that makes it possible to live. Two hearts beating a rhythm to a song written without a pen. And heard only by them.

On Sunday, my mother left him a message. He did not have to pick her up as usual for eight o' clock mass, as she was going early to the seven a.m. so that she could drive to L.A. early to take care of me. She didn't want to burden him with an early rise on a Sunday. She sat in the pew, in silent prayer. And felt a hand upon her shoulder. It was Ron. My mother's heart swelled. He sat next to her. He held her hand. And said, "Time has no meaning, when you truly love someone." His leg touched hers, and she knew, her own dream had come true. Because there was a man who never gave up. He chiseled away because he knew there was a treasure behind that wall. A fortress who's time had come. A heart he knew could mend - but only if she would let him in.

Thank you, Mom and Ron, for being an example of hope to others who have walls. And showing my children that as long as they believe in what they cannot see, dreams truly can - come true.