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"Birthmark of Love"

Matches in Heaven©: Anything and Everything About Soulmates

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30 YEARS OF HAPPINESS TOGETHER: COMPROMISE AND COMMUNICATION

This is a story of two people who, against all odds, made a relationship work that was doomed from the start. They overcame many obstacles in their many years together and are eager to share their story with the next generation. Being "in love" is easy. Growing in love is not. You have to choose to love the person you're with through the hard times as well as the easy ones.

Interviewer: So, introduce yourself for those of us who don't know you. Your name, age, where you're from? Let's start with those.

Gina: I'm Gina, I won't say my age but I'm in my early sixties, and I'm originally from Malibu, California. I love swimming, surfing, jet-skiing, and pretty much anything that involves being in the water. I work as a lifeguard on weekends and I own a shop, so that takes up most of my time during the week.

Holland: I'm Holland. Age sixty-six. I'm originally from Tampa, Florida. I, like Gina, love water activities, especially surfing. Surfing is something I really love to do on the weekends. I work at a law firm as my day job, rehearsing witnesses, making calls to clients, gathering and sorting evidence for quite a few lawyers in the city.

Interviewer: So, how did you two meet? It's not as if Florida and California are close.

Gina: That's a bit of a funny story, actually. And not a particularly short one for either of us.

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Gina, in her little apartment in Malibu, was getting a call from her mother—a thing she dreaded with most of her soul. It wasn't that she didn't love her mother, but, rather, Gina knew that she would be pulled into something, most likely without much of her own consent. She sat on her ivory-colored couch, hoping for the better of the two scenarios which had played up in her mind. One was that she was being told to go somewhere for some reason and the other was to break some happy news to her. Considering she only had a couple of employees to run her store and not many to cover her lifeguarding shifts, she was hoping for the latter over the former.

"Hi, honey!" Her mother was far too cheerful at the other end of the video call.

"Hi, mom. What's up?" Gina was wary. Her mother was always cheerful, but this was the we're-going-on-a-vacation type of giddiness that she recognized in her mother of thirty and some odd years.

"Well, I just booked a trip for the whole family to go to Venice!" Gina's first thought was that her mother was talking about Venice Beach, which was not far from her, and her second was the Italian city halfway across the world. She couldn't believe her mother booked a trip that she was expected to go on without her consent, yet it didn't surprise her. "We'll be staying in a beautiful villa for two weeks and enjoying the beauties of northern Italy."

"Mom, I have two jobs and a life. I run my own business. I can't just up and leave whenever I like it." Gina was fuming, her anger unable to be contained. But, she did what she always did and sucked it up. "When is the trip?"

"It's in a month and a half. Perfect timing for your brother's birthday." Her mother looked so pleased with herself that she didn't notice Gina's annoyance. They never took a vacation on her birthday. It wasn't as if it landed on a holiday or near a holiday. It was merely the summer and that's when everyone took their vacations to exotic destinations. "So make sure to bring him a gift when you come. Flights are all booked, too. You'll arrive a half a day before us since the flights were cheaper that way. I'll send you all the details in an email." Gina just kept a smile on her face and her annoyance off of it, nodding and responding with a generic, "happy" answer that would satisfy her obnoxious mother.