Since I fancy myself a writer of Romance and happily-ever-after, I'll tell you my story in story form. Not too original, I know, but here goes.

Love Is a Many Splendored Thing. Perhaps some of you remember that movie. Ah yes, we have the romantic scene where William Holden is enraptured by the beautiful Eurasian girl--played by Jennifer Jones. Love is, Splendored?" Somehow that doesn't equate. Allow me to take you back to those days of yesteryear where "Spare the rod and spoil the child," was the mantra of countless parents.

My earliest recollection of the word love was when Mother snapped a willow switch from the tree outback and intoned, "This is going to hurt me more than you." The devil it will, I thought while backing away, covering my backside with pitifully small hands. "It is precisely because I love you so much that I must teach you not to push a playmate out of a tree," she went on relentlessly, stalking me like a bird of prey. Grabbing me with what I suddenly viewed as talons, she proceeded to whale the living daylight out of me. At least my five-year-old rump thought so. Splendored, ha!

Then there was the time she whacked me across the mouth for uttering a raunchy four-letter word at my aunt. Her reprimand had a lasting impression when she followed it with, "Don't you ever say that word again! Your auntie loves you, and now you've hurt her feelings." Noticing my aunt's smirk, I turned away muttering, "Love, ha!"

"What did you say?" Mother asked.

"Nothing," said I. Oh, I guess I should fess-up that this aunt is the playmate I blithely, or is that maliciously, pushed out of the tree a few years back.

Time crawled by as only it can for youth, and at the tender age of 13 I begged to go on a real date with Johnny DoRight. "Everyone is allowed to date but me," I wailed -- with perfect logic on my side. Right?

"Sorry," said my dad. "I know that kid, and Johnny will do wrong." What does he mean by that, I wondered, and barely heard his next words. "If all your friends are dating, which I doubt, then their parents must not love them as much as we love you or they'd know when to say no." So much for that ploy.

Perhaps it was at about that time that I saw the aforementioned movie. I waltzed out of the theater with stars in my eyes, just like the producers knew millions of impressionable suckers would. It took a few years more to recall my earlier encounters with the word love and to wonder about that word -- splendored. But in time, those revelations came.

Before long, age 14, I spied the man of my dreams and announced, "I'm going to marry him someday." Oh, did I mention I'm as relentless as a dog gnawing a bone? To quote my family's assessment, I'm stubborn. Hey, I'm not a Capricorn for nothing. At 17, I married the man of my dreams and had to promise to love, what the heck, give it the old college try; honor, I can do that; and obey -- Not likely!

Shortly thereafter, I gazed from the rented, over-the-garage apartment window, then glanced around the postage-stamp sized rooms. A far cry from the grassy knoll overlooking Hong Kong in that move. Splendored? But hey, the young fella I married was good-looking and nice, also persuasive.

A year later I found myself with a squalling infant on my hands. Night after night while the rest of the world snoozed, I sleepily stumbled back and forth across the carpet trying to reason with that kid. BE QUIET! But would that little varmint listen? Nooo. So, I changed her diaper again, stuck a bottle into her mouth to silence the megaphone-decibel crying. That little face took on a contented expression and the screaming-red complexion mellowed to a peach color. Drifting in the quiet of my own mind, I thought, this has got to get better. Splendored, ha.

So what happened? I put myself through the same thing again, twice! And that nice, good-looking guy I married kissed me goodbye each morning, smiled brightly and chirped, "I love you. Have a nice day." Then escaped lickety-split out the door to the quieter world of adults in the workplace. Somewhere along the line I was brought up short when I swatted my son on his bum for pushing his sister off her tricycle, and found myself saying, "This hurts me more than you!" I settled that dispute by plunking the little darlings into bed for a nap, at 9 a.m., leaned over and dutifully kissed each one, and said, "I love you, sleep tight." Then darted into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

"Ouch!" I wailed under my breath, and sucked the finger where I'd broken a blood vessel. I'd missed my son's little butt and hit the tricycle seat instead. I turned on the cold water to ease my smarting finger before it swelled to melon size. "Mother was right!" From bleak eyes I surveyed the water-spattered mirror, and the rest of the bathroom that looked like a demolished war zone.

I did seriously consider hopping the next flight to the moon. Surely one was poised to take off soon because that was, after all, the era when we were fulfilling Kennedy's charge to "reach the moon in this decade," and my nice fella was one of a legion of engineers who worked on that project. From those days I have a PHTCC from UCLA's School of Engineering. Um, that's a Putting Hubby Though College Certificate, which was presented to me as were many others to the wives of graduating engineers.

When my fella said, "I'm missing out on my children growing up because I work around the clock," we sold out in the city, and, though knowing nothing about agriculture, bought a ranch in the country, and proceeded to learn all we could about growing avocadoes, our own food, farm animals, and horses. Oh, my guy also changed from aerospace to agricultural irrigation engineering. Chances are, if you buy citrus, wine, nuts, row crop vegetables of any kind in California, Florida, Arizona, Mexico, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, Spain, Iran, at one time he designed the irrigation systems to water those crops.

Beyond my duties as chief cook and bottle washer, nanny, chauffeur, wife, secretary/treasurer of my guy's consulting corporation, and bookkeeping for a couple ag companies, I also worked part-time in the cosmetics industry. When we moved to Florida from Southern California, I found myself at loose ends. I no longer cared one bit that some lady might have a "unique" skin problem. That's when I read my first Romance: Shanna, by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. I was hooked. That's also about the time I rashly said, "I can write one of those! How hard can it be?"

I also recalled that starry-eyed girl I once was who fell in love those many years ago. That woman of today has learned, there's far more to love than she'd ever imagined when she was thrilled by Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.

I hadn't been writing the great American romance on yellow pad with pen for long when the dictionary and thesaurus became my constant companions. And just for the heck of it, one day I opened my now-tattered Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th addition and ran my finger down the text. It's not there? Oh come on, that can't be! I searched again.

"I'll be dipped!"

There's no such word as Splendored.