It took me about five years before I let someone get close to me. We all heal at a different pace. No one knows why, but what I found was it was important was to heal completely before dating or especially getting involved in a relationship.

I moved to Hawaii and again, I fell in love within the first week I was there. Actually the very first night we went to one of the hotels for live music and this gorgeous man asked me to dance. He actually sang the song that was being played in my ear.

He asked to have dinner with me the next night and it was one of the most romantic relationships I’ve ever had. We spent evenings walking on the beach sipping champagne, he played classical music for me on his grand piano, we toured all the islands on his days off and we had amazing dinners out and over at his friends homes.

Okay, living in Hawaii had something to do with it, in fact more than I knew. We were together for five months before I had to return to California to see family.

He then came to California to look at some land, but the magic that was so prevalent in Hawaii was non existent when he came over. We were both disappointed but realistic and let the relationship end.

I was married for five years, during the Viet Nam era and there was no chance the marriage could survive the trauma of that skirmish. I still can’t imagine how anyone recovered from the emotional devastation of that incident.

So after 3 years of trying to become better to eliminate the difficulties of being married to someone who would never learn to relax or trust anyone the rest of his life, I finally made the choice to go solo.

This was one of the challenging times of my life. I didn’t have any idea how to cope with being single when nearly everyone I knew by this time was married.

I had an amazing boss in Chico and he finally insisted I go out to dinner with one of the men he knew. Rick was amazingly kind and gentle. He did everything he could to break the bad influence of my marriage. He made me open up and talk about my experiences and especially all the things I didn’t want to talk about.

Then six months later he moved to Tempe for a teaching job.

A few months later I was turned down to buy a house (way before women were allowed the same courtesy as men at banks) so I took my money to Laguna Seca Raceway near Monterey and purchased an auto cross car after they let me drive the track.

I replaced dating with racing, for awhile anyway.