{"id":998,"date":"2008-02-29T09:45:25","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T09:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/fr-mike-meets-hot-chick-in-bar.html"},"modified":"2008-02-29T09:45:25","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T09:45:25","slug":"fr-mike-meets-hot-chick-in-bar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/fr-mike-meets-hot-chick-in-bar.html","title":{"rendered":"Fr. Mike Meets Hot Chick In Bar (or something like that)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mike%20and%20vickie3.jpeg\"
\nBelow is Mike and Vickie’s love story–the details about how they met (when, ahem, Mike was a priest). It’s a beautiful and refreshing tale, and my favorite chapter of our book on marriage. Please don’t judge him too harshly for his behavior in New York. When I see the way he looks at his wife, I know that he was certainly not meant for the priesthood.<\/em>
\nMichael: It was 1968, the year Kennedy and King were killed, the year of burning cities and the Chicago convention. Anything was possible. Even love.
\nVickie: I had just moved to New York from Mississippi. I was just out of college, and excited about my first job and life in the big city. On October 25th my roommate Holly and I moved into a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village, our first home away from home. That night Holly suggested we go down the block to a sing-along place called Your Father\u2019s Mustache. I was tired but decided to tag along.
\nMichael: I was 28, and a Catholic priest. Ever since I was a kid, I had always wanted to be a priest. I wanted to help other people and make them happy, especially children. As a seminarian I dreamt of burning myself out for Christ before I was 40, just like Don Bosco, my favorite saint. When I started to do that, I had second thoughts. I had gotten back to the rectory late at night when my friend Artie called from New York. He was on vacation, and asked me to hop a plane and join him.
\n\u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019ve got work to do.\u201d
\n\u201cWhen\u2019s the last time you had a vacation?\u201d he asked. \u201cCome on. You can see some plays. You love plays. It\u2019ll be fun.\u201d
\nHe talked me into it. When I got to the hotel, the desk man gave me a note. It said, \u201cMeet me at Your Father\u2019s Mustache. In the Village. Seven o\u2019clock.\u201d
\nVickie: At the time, believe it or not, two guys wanted to marry me. All my life all I ever wanted to be was married, have children, and live in a house with a white picket fence. But I couldn\u2019t decide between them. One was my high school sweetheart: he was kind and gentle. The other was my boyfriend from college: he was strong and confident. I remember once asking my mother: \u201cHow will I know when I\u2019m really in love?\u201d She said, \u201cYou\u2019ll know, and you won\u2019t have to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nMichael: I got to Your Father\u2019s Mustache at seven. Artie wasn\u2019t there. I stood on the sawdust floor near the back and waited. A band in the front played banjos and a tuba and piano, and everybody in the room drank beer and sang songs like Those Were the Days, My Friend, I Thought They\u2019d Never End. I looked at my watch. It was 7:30. Where was Artie?
\nI just stood there and watched everyone having fun. I noticed two girls sitting at a table against the wall. One was blonde, the other brunette. They were both pretty but the brunette was stunning. She had long dark hair and wore a poncho like Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars. She was singing and swaying with such joy. I couldn\u2019t take my eyes off her.
\nVickie: My roommate Holly was blond and gorgeous, she could have been a model. I said to her, \u201cThere\u2019s a guy near the bar, and he\u2019s looking at you.\u201d
\nMichael: And then I did something I had never done before. Here I was, a priest who had always kept the rules, and what did I do? I went and asked the bartender for a pitcher of beer. Then I walked over to the table and asked the girls, \u201cWould you like some beer?\u201d I couldn\u2019t believe I was doing this. It was all in slow motion.
\nVickie: I couldn\u2019t believe it. He sat in front of me.
\nMichael: She was magic. I noticed that her eyes were different colors. One was hazel and specked with green, and the other a cloudy blue.
\nVickie: When I was a baby I fell on a glass toy. It broke and cut my eye. I was blind in that eye and looked like a freak. When we played games, I was always the bad guy or the monster. As I got older, adults looked at me and recoiled. I used to beg God for a miracle so I could look like everybody else. Sure, I had two boyfriends but I didn\u2019t know how anyone could really love me the way I was.
\nMichael: She was beautiful. Still is.
\nVickie: He was handsome. I asked him what he did.
\nMichael: I told her, \u201cI\u2019m a priest.\u201d
\nVickie: I roared! I had never heard that before! The best thing was, I knew he was telling the truth.
\nMichael: I loved it that she laughed. Artie came in and sat next to Holly and they sang while Vickie and I tried to talk over the music. After half an hour I asked her if she\u2019d like to take a walk.
\nVickie: We walked around the Village for hours. I told him about my eye and about my boyfriend dilemma and how I didn\u2019t know what to do. I had grown up Catholic and went to Catholic schools but Michael was totally different from any priest I\u2019d ever met. I didn\u2019t see him as a priest. He was just the kindest person I\u2019d ever known.
\nMichael: It was one of those beautiful October nights when the air is crisp and clean and you can see things a mile away. Vickie told me that one of the guys who wanted to marry her was strong and that the other one was gentle, and that she couldn\u2019t make up her mind between the two. She was so good. I said she deserved to find someone who had both qualities.
\nVickie: And I thought: I\u2019m looking at him.
\nMichael: I told her how I loved working with kids but how it was also lonely and that I\u2019d been thinking about what it would be like to marry someone and have children of our own. We walked and talked until about two in the morning. I walked her home.
\nVickie: We climbed the stairs, sat on a step and talked some more. I was thinking of what my mother told me: \u201cYou\u2019ll know and you won\u2019t have to ask.\u201d
\nMichael: Then I asked her something I hadn\u2019t asked since Sally Brightman in ninth grade. I asked her, \u201cMay I kiss you?\u201d
\nVickie: It was the perfect ending of a perfect night.
\nMichael: The next day I took a subway to her office and asked the lady upfront to give her a package. Vickie had told me how she grew up living over her father\u2019s bakery in a small town so I wrapped up a chocolate-covered doughnut with a red rose in a gift box.
\nVickie: Everyday at noon for three days he came with a different present; we had lunch on a park bench or in a diner that was as romantic to us as the Taj Mahal. And every night we went out. One night he took me to Man of La Mancha, and I thought that he was Don Quixote and I was Dulcinea and that we were living an impossible dream.
\nMichael: I remember after the show, walking down Broadway, holding her hand, and thinking, \u201cI am walking through a neon colored dream with this beautiful, wonderful girl. I can\u2019t believe this is happening, but I could do it for the rest of my life.\u201d Remember that orange chiffon mini-skirt you wore?
\nVickie: It was pink.
\nMichael: I remember orange.
\nVickie: You always do.
\nMichael: On the fourth day she had a touch of the flu and couldn\u2019t go to work. I got her a tuna fish sandwich, her favorite food, and went to her apartment. I sat by her bedside and told her a story.
\nVickie: The Tattooed Boy.
\nMichael: It was a story I had first told years ago to kids at Angel Guardian Orphanage. I loved to tell them stories. I\u2019d just start and a story would come out. This one was about Christopher Holiday, a boy with bat\u2019s ears and bat\u2019s tears and a little clown\u2019s frown. Envious people had tattooed him because they were afraid of the love and goodness in him. Christopher wore a clown\u2019s suit and worked at a freak show. One night he decided to run away. But before he left the carnival grounds, he came across another little boy, sitting on the edge of the carousel, who also wore a clown\u2019s suit and looked just like him \u2013 with bat\u2019s ears and bat\u2019s tears and a little clown\u2019s frown! He asked the boy, in astonishment, who he was. The boy was confident and loving and said to him, \u201cLook into my eyes! Look into my eyes and you\u2019ll see who I really am!\u201d
\nChristopher looked into his eyes. And what he saw was a perfect image of himself. He began to love himself the way the boy on the carousel first loved him.
\nThat\u2019s how Christ loves us, I told the kids, and that\u2019s how it was with Vickie and me.
\nVickie: I didn\u2019t want him to go back to Chicago.
\nMichael: I told her, I\u2019ve got All Saints Day on Sunday. I have to go back. We have to be mature. This is crazy. We mustn\u2019t call each other for a month.
\nVickie: He called me the night he got back. A year later, in October, we got married in a church in Greenwich Village.
\nSoon after we married I got an infection in my eye. The bad eye was causing problems and had to be removed. The eye was removed and I received an artificial one that made me look just like everyone else. It was another gift from God. All my dreams, all my prayers, had come true.
\nMichael: You don\u2019t have a white picket fence.
\nVickie: We have each other and two wonderful sons, and we\u2019re one. We don\u2019t need the fence.
\nMichael: Life hasn\u2019t always been easy, but we\u2019ve had no more than three or four quarrels in 32 years. And none lasted more than a few hours. I can\u2019t remember when the last one was.
\nVickie: There\u2019s nothing worth arguing about.
\nMichael: We\u2019ve grown into that wonderful stage where we think each other\u2019s thoughts and feel each other\u2019s feelings and say the same things at the same time. There\u2019s always an uneasy thought lurking in the back of our mind that someday one of us will get sick and die, but we believe that what is good and beautiful in us will always live and always be together as one.
\nVickie: I just live moment by moment and am grateful to God every day.
\nMichael: And I still can\u2019t believe how lucky I am. First you fall in love. That\u2019s the exciting part. Then you learn to love. That\u2019s the hard part. Finally, you simply love being loving. That, by far, is the best part.
\nVickie: You taught me how to love others.
\nMichael: You taught me how to love myself.
\nVickie: It\u2019s all the same.
\nMichael: Are you sure that dress wasn\u2019t orange?
\nVickie: It was pink.
\nMichael: It was beautiful.
\nVickie: Yes. It still is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Below is Mike and Vickie’s love story–the details about how they met (when, ahem, Mike was a priest). It’s a beautiful and refreshing tale, and my favorite chapter of our book on marriage. Please don’t judge him too harshly for his behavior in New York. When I see the way he looks at his wife,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage"],"yoast_head":"\nFr. Mike Meets Hot Chick In Bar (or something like that) - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2008\/02\/fr-mike-meets-hot-chick-in-bar.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fr. Mike Meets Hot Chick In Bar (or something like that) - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Below is Mike and Vickie’s love story–the details about how they met (when, ahem, Mike was a priest). It’s a beautiful and refreshing tale, and my favorite chapter of our book on marriage. Please don’t judge him too harshly for his behavior in New York. 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