IT ALL BEGAN AND ENDED WITH A KILT

I may have mentioned before that, for our wedding, I really wanted to wear a kilt. I have Scottish heritage, and I wanted to celebrate it. Jen did not want me to wear a kilt. Was it perhaps jealousy? Was she worried that she would not be the most attractive person in a skirt on her own wedding day?

At any rate, the plan for the kilt lay smoldering on the trash heap.

Over the following 16 years I had tried to revive the idea of a kilt on special occasions. None of them ever happened. Finally we came to a great opportunity: a cruise. I floated the idea with Jen...and it took wing an flew! I then introduced the concept to my friends, and they agreed that it would be ever-so-cool on formal nights to wear a kilt instead of just a plain old boring tuxedo.

Of course some wives prevailed-- so we switched it to the semi-formal night for those boys. But as for me and my house: we would wear the kilt! I think that, in the end, those wives were jealous-- I definitely was the better looking one in the skirt on those nights.

Ok...let me just say that it wasn't all just the kilt issue that took down our marriage. It was really a non-issue compared to other stuff. This is not the forum for that, let me just say that over the last year of my marriage-- even with my awesome son TROY whom I love-- I fell out of love with my Jen. Things came to a head on that cruise, while I was in the kilt. I told her how I felt. Tears fell. Many tears fell. I had already cried out my tears in silence before that point, so I am sure that I looked like the insensitive jerk.

To tell the truth, I replaced the love in my heart that I lost (there are reasons...trust me) with another love. She is the subject of another 300 blogs that are all forthcoming...all under the Vanj heading. But I digress...

After a month of trying to make a relationship work that I had already abandoned, I moved out and on with my life. We are in the early stages of divorce. I am trying to get time with TROY whom I love. I miss him like the rose misses the water. I need him.

So it all began and ended with a kilt.