Christine Mitchell and Stanley Mitchell

00:04 My name is Christine Mitchell. I'm 62 years old. It's July 1st 2016 weather in Providence, Rhode Island, and I am the wife in this relationship. I'm glad that you are I'm Stanley Mitchell 70. 73 years old can make it myself older again, and it's July 1st 2016, and we're in Providence, Rhode Island.

00:28 And you're my husband. So I'm here to tell the story of how we met and came to be and I was 50 years old. I got laid off from my job and I decided to go back to school to become a massage therapist. So there was a girl I met in class. Her name was Jenny and she periodically would bring up her friends stand to me. And at the time I was living in my own home. I wasn't married. I never been married. I didn't have kids I was financially secure but I was in a relationship that was coming to be at to an end. And so Jenny would bring up stand and I would think about it every once in awhile. But of course I wanted to wait until the relationship I was in was over so about a year-and-a-half into school that came to be so I talked to Jimmy she was going to contact Stan and she did.

01:24 And he was kind of skeptic, but we started sending emails and for a first date stand picked November 5th.

01:36 10 pics November 5th you pick November 5th. Guy Fawkes Day in and it was going to be the theater group was going to hold this Guy Fawkes celebration or

01:51 Reenactment on Misquamicut Beach in Westerly, Rhode Island. So November 5th came and it was the most miserable weather but that night I headed down in my car to Rhode Island. And as I got into the state Not only was it rainy and cold but this heavy fog came in and I'm crawling up Route 6 and even through this thick fog. I got such a sense of

02:21 I was in a very rural area and I'm from Worcester, Massachusetts. I was in the Heart of the City. So I'm driving through this town. And by the time I got to stand Street I could tell I was deep into the country. So I get to your address and I'm driving down this long winding driveway.

02:42 And barely can I make out but on each side of the cars I'm going down ice. It looks like these totem poles and is all these.

02:51 Figures and I think I've driven by a coyote and an eagle in this more faces on these poles and more faces in trees and there's signs that I can barely make out and all I could think was son of a bitch she filled sheet. She fixed me up with a warlock. I was so scared of where I was going and the driveway empties out into this big circles in the air in front of me.

03:18 Is this really Bleak looking log cabin and outcomes you this big buffalo of a guy and we exchanged pleasantries and I get in your car and all I can smell is your coffee and you kind of fill up the whole, like my Uncle Bill who I'm not particularly fond of and I keep thinking I am not kissing this guy. Goodnight.

03:42 Keep you know none of this. I know that so we're driving down to Westerly Rhode Island. And I think the conversation went well enough between us is it was as awkward as first dates are high but we did it and we got down there and these poor people trying to put on this presentation. I mean the weather was just not cooperating it was rainy and dreary and the rain my hair was plastered to my head and it was cold in the bonfire was just as the thing because the weather was so bad and I thought it was

04:17 But we get back in the car and you asked me to go out for a drink and

04:25 I'm like in my mind no freaking way because I feel like I look like crap but I was pleasant already. I'm just like no, I just want to go home and I did so we go back to your house and I am so wigged out by your place. I have such a sense of spirits around me. I'm scared. I'm actually scared to drive out of that driveway by myself because I think I'm going to see an apparition or a spirit in front of me. So I want you to drive out ahead of me in your car to the road and then I'll be okay and I asked you to do this and you kind of chuckled.

05:03 But you said all right, and just before I'm getting into my car, you said to me, how can I always have a hug?

05:12 And I'm like in my mind just get this over with and I go walking over to you.

05:20 And I got the best hug I've ever gotten in my whole life. It was an awesome hug, and this is why we're sitting here across from each other today because of that hug. It was beautiful, but at that time, I just wanted to beat feet. So I stuck that hug way in the back of my mind. I jumped in my car, and I went home and I was so glad to be home in my nice warm well-lit little house and that next morning. I got up and as soon as I got up I sent an email off to you. Thanks, but no thanks. Let's just be friends, and I saw Jenny that morning in school, and I'm saying, thanks, but no. Thanks in Saturday passes.

06:02 And then Sunday comes in and buy Sunday night, that stupid hug is cropping up in my mind and Monday comes in Tuesday and by Wednesday that hug is haunting me and I go to school and I say to Jenny call him call him.

06:23 And tell him to ask me out again.

06:26 So Ginny calls you surreptitiously to ask you how the date went. And you tell her that I didn't want to see you anymore when she starts telling you to ask me out. And I know now that you knew exactly what was going on and he saying her on the other end. She's standing right there.

06:42 And

06:44 The cut to the chase the second day it happened and it was an awesome date. It was a day date.

06:51 And I went back down to your house and you live on 8 acres of land and you're in the forest and you about a reservoir and we went walking and talking.

07:05 And I was attracted to you. Yay, and there was chemistry. Yay, and we clicked yay and

07:15 I felt that the relationship just took off.

07:20 So on that second day cuz my introduction to the Log Cabin, I walk into the door of his house. Now when you was someone said to you picture an old man living in the woods in a log cabin all by himself, I'm sure an image comes to mind and I want you to know this was exactly what that look like. I walk in that door in the first thing I see there in front of me is this massive beautiful stone chimney. It's absolutely enormous. It takes up the center of the room and it looks just like the fireplace on Bonanza that the Cartwright's lived in in their house on the Ponderosa. So I'm taking this fireplace in and I start taking everything end.

08:11 And you are a collector of all things.

08:16 And I look in on one side of the wall is all these Native American artifacts.

08:23 Artistically arranged and then I stopped walking into the house little further and all of a sudden. I'm in freaking Wally World and is all these gadgets and toys and juggling balls and a little airplane hanging from the ceiling by a spring when you pull them down the wings flap cuz of thing goes popping up and is a wire strung from one wall to another and it's a little Tin Man on a bicycle balancing. It was a bear a bear and then there's another bear stuck on a pole as if it's climbing up. It was a toy bear and right beneath that beer is an actual Hatchet just bang smashed into that pole like someone meant business.

09:08 This place was a collector's dream and a minimalist Nightmare and this is what I entered into.

09:18 So time goes on I adjust and I'm noticing that whenever I'm in the kitchen is all these little like these little flies or moths around and I really don't know what they are and it's the beginning. It's just like a half thought I noticed a man but the more I'm there the more I'm conscious of them and it just annoying and I say to him and what are these things? I don't know babe. They've been there forever. And so it gets to the point where one day I'm going to cook for a room. So I open up the cabinet and I grabbed a box of something. I think it was macaroni in a little more flights out.

09:56 And then I start moving more boxes in more little moths fly out and it wasn't like this was a cabinet full of rotten festering food.

10:06 But I pull out these boxes and they are expired by years and all these little guys flying around. These are my husband's best friend's the food moths.

10:17 And the freezer was not much better. I take out a piece of meat to thaw for supper.

10:23 It's 5 years old 5 years old bed. That's not a problem. It's in packaging. Just put it back in baby's good for 25 years. We can use it in another. Oh my God. So what I did when I started staying over every morning

10:40 I would take two or three boxes of dry goods out of the cabinet and two or three packages of meat out of the freezer and I would unwrap the meat as for the packaging away and I'd start out for driving up at Country Road, and I'd be lobbing.

10:56 Pieces of frozen meat out the window into the woods there goes a steak there goes a burger there goes a chicken breast over the hood of my car when I went to work. I look for the worst trash bin. I could find that I would dump the dry goods in there.

11:14 And then there was our first rain storm. How romantic I first bad rain storm in the Log Cabin. I had to work. I came home late at night. I walk into the kitchen and they're on one side of the kitchen of all these paper cups. All these wax paper cups. All different sizes strategically place. I think they might have even been a couple bowls out ended catching the rain that's falling into our house from the roof. It was raining buckets, babe. That's not a problem. This is the country you're in a log cabin. You're not a city girl anymore. You got a drip you just take a paper cup you put it down. It catches the water all this rain babe. It's not a waste will take it will dump it into pool at the end.

12:05 That was a log cabin in the last part of this was my cats when I move the stands house stand had this magnificent dog. He was a lab mix.

12:16 And he was so smart. He was always running around our property nothing. No, no dangerous creatures got nearest no coyotes no foxes.

12:29 And he was so smart and deer would walk right by him turkeys. He knew the good from the bad and when I lived in Worcester I lived with for cats and they were used to going outside to a big yard with me for a couple hours. They eat grass. Puke 12 things cats do and then we come back into the house.

12:50 And that was their life. Well now here we are out in the country and I knew they would be safe with the dog. They are so stand put an indoor outdoor you put an indoor outdoor in for the cats in from that day on everyday was their birthday and they would go out and Hunt to Oblivion and the things they brought into the house. We've had snakes.

13:16 And squirrels and baby rabbits and rodents and birds too numerous to count and some of them when we were in the house we were able to save and other times would walk into a Slaughter but those cats they live on the edge and they have the best life in the world because of you.

13:34 And

13:36 This went on this was we met at the end of 2004.

13:41 And we prevailed all through that time. No, we started we met at the end of 2004. I graduated in 2005 yet 2004 and

13:54 So we Prevail through all of this we had our ups and downs where to older people but it was an adjustment. But I think we get along really well and in 2007.

14:07 You got to tell him how you asked me to marry you we got married, huh? How you asked me to marry? You did I ask you to marry me?

14:15 I think so.

14:17 How do we get married LOL? Well one day I'm in the kitchen. I think he just handed me a ring here, babe. Something like that. I can't remember what you said to a you always wanted to get married or something. Like it was it was really unromantic, but it was it was Classics fan who's classic you but when we got married, we we just it was just him and me and the girl the couple that set us up.

14:41 And after that we had to go to the town hall to get the marriage certificate certified. Yeah. So anyways Foster is a very tiny Town. There's not too many eligible men available in that town. My husband is very handsome and everybody knows everybody's business except me the new girl. But anyways, we go to the town hall to get this marriage certificate notarized or whatever it was and he's out in the parking lot still talking the motorcycle and I walk into the town hall and there's three or four women there and I told him what I need.

15:20 And all of a sudden he want you walking behind me and everything stops, the three will for women. They look at one another and they look at me and they say to me you married him and I told my girlfriend later. I felt like I begged a freaking dear. I was expecting these women to come up to me one by one just like high five me and we went back on the parking lot afterwards. I said to you who are you? Oh my God. It was so funny. You still don't know how I'm still finding out.

15:53 But this is been a great journey. This year is nine years that we've been married.

16:02 Yeah, we got married in 2007. Is it 90th? 7/7 17 and we've had our ups and downs, but we prevailed and

16:19 I'm just so thankful that I met you. You are one of the smartest wisest.

16:26 Cancel this kind of people that I've ever met in my life. And I'm so glad I'm so grateful that we met when we were older in life because I know that if we'd met when we were younger, we were in the lasted I was too independent and you were too busy chasing skirts, you know, and I'm just so thankful for every day that I'm there. I open my eyes. I'm in the most beautiful place and you know when I was 21 years old, like everybody else my age. I thought marriage was just a piece of paper.

17:00 And I know now that marriage is so much so much so much more than that.

17:08 And

17:13 It's an art it really is an art.

17:16 To get along with this one person your whole life and to live with and work your way around and within through this one person and

17:28 You have to know when to give Vin when to concede and you really have to put that person first so much of the time what times and you want but if they're on the same table as you with your bond the same playing field as you they get that when their time comes they concede and this beautiful ebenflow that goes on and I'm just so grateful to you to have been to be part of this journey with me. I have absolutely no regrets.

18:02 About getting married at all. I'm so glad I met you.

18:06 End

18:07 So that's my my piece of this whole thing.

18:11 Well, you wanted me to keep quiet and I'm certainly glad that I did cuz that was beautiful. Thank you so much. I was really scared. You were going to open your mouth and piss me off with something that you said and then I'd be cranky the whole way home. That was really the reason why well, I'm glad you I'm glad I did because I have my interpretation of some of what you have to say, but that was gorgeous. I was beautiful.

18:34 22 minutes do I?

18:38 Oh, okay. Yeah, I will sew in relation to how we met. I could see that most of that is true plus Jenny I call Sparky. You know, why because she has that smile and lights up a room.

18:51 And when she contacted me about having a Wednesday when she contacted I can't say you tell me you got to talk to me. Okay, so when?

19:03 When the contact was made told Jenny at the time that I wasn't really interested in having a relationship much like you I was reluctant and then across a lot of what you say is true. We at least we didn't leave right away and we just kind of started emailing and that's what opened the door and then yes. Yes because she she told me how old you were and I said, do you know I asked him that the kind of things that men ask, you know, what does she look like? Is she overweight whatever and then she sent me your picture in the you a fifty-fifty that and she sent me a picture of you with your dog, Sadie and

19:47 I remember looking at that picture and thinking it's no way this woman is 50 years old can't be the case, you know, so I contacted her butt by email and said, you know, that's not really that picture must been taken years ago. And then she told me she got back to me a few days later said yeah, you're right that she was 48 there. So I said well, okay and that's kind of fun. Then. We went through that dancing around on the on the internet and and then we had that date and pretty much what you said, although I like I said, I thought I was wonderful. I'm so ugly. Oh my God, you know how you feeling my hair is thin and it was plastic down in my head. And that's the main reason I didn't want to go out for a drink. I just felt so gross looking. I was like, oh my God, and I didn't actually

20:39 We had that hug.

20:41 He's talking about the other Regents coming out at you at some Spit with them out at you. And it's funny because those are all things that I put up along the driveway with you now knowing it was

20:56 It was funny because I remember asking you for that hug. And when I hug you, it was like wow.

21:01 And then that I thought it was at that point we decide we wait to be just friends. So I didn't remember the email part of it afterwards. But I remember Jenny calling me and having that conversation and then BC she's there isn't she? Yeah well and she really wants me to ask her out again. Yeah, are you attracted to me?

21:27 On a second date when we met you two look like crap that's insecure that you never look like crap to me. It was it was great in the sense that

21:47 You will you will you personalities outgoing you got that amazing smile even your eyes smile and your smile. So that was that was there right away for me, you know, but I also thought well, she's a city girl, you know, when she's little classy for me. I'm just a simplistic old man living in the woods who's having fun and

22:11 That's why I was not overly surprised. You know that I had been on one or two blind dates before my life and they usually something comes up there and in that particular case it was you rejecting me. Just never happens.

22:29 But anyway, I was okay with it because you have to be involved you and what have to want to be involved in a relationship to work. So but that place that you live that is so special D. I think I told you.

22:48 Both of us believe that there was this enormous enormous enormous Pine Tree in the back that we think is probably the widest circumference circumference of trees in Rhode Island in both of us feel that this is a sacred tree that ceremonies were held around us. And even the land that were on that your house is on. It's just amazing that you're so into Native American and you're a hypnotist and you're into this whole other world that you found this piece of property to build this house on.

23:22 And when I first moved in there, I told you that for something like for the first two or three years when I would go out at night. I felt just like this that something.

23:33 Was watching me people were watching me. Like, who is she she doesn't belong here. And I think they had to get to know me that I wasn't there to her anything.

23:44 That I was a kind person and I also felt every time I would go out like if I went out at night to go change the bird feeder or something.

23:55 Of all things to feel but we're both very sensitive as far as intuition and all of that. I always felt someone was going to bash me on the back of my head and I don't know if maybe in a past life. I've been there and that happened or if that was just might still a continuation of the feeling of not quite being welcomed yet. She doesn't belong here. But all of that's gone now, I don't feel that anymore. I feel very at ease except a possible wild animal to something when I step outside at night, but I no longer have that feeling of being watched who is blessed by the visit of a beer personal with deer down there with wild turkeys in the last year.

24:47 I go taking the dogs into the woods cuz the cat came running in the house out of Michael. What's he running from? So I'm like I take the two dogs out there and there's a Big Bear right there and those poor dogs. I drag them back to the house so fast, I was scared, but it is just been

25:03 It's just it's always a surprise there, especially with the cats cuz you never know what you're going to come home to anyways, but it's just a joy living there and it's such a special special place. It's a bitch to live there in the winter time with the driveway and trying to get out and all of that. But if you can get past the winter and even the winter is just so gorgeous in its own right? It's just the inconvenience of having to get up and go to work or whatever trying to get out of there.

25:31 But we live in here. You're always saying we're in the one of the most beautiful places we could be and you're absolutely right. We are we're so lucky. She's amazing that you pick that place though out of everywhere, you know. Yeah, well as partially because of what you said, you know, what is that sense that feeling that you have in that tree is was at one point we quoted as though there were not two later. I think we we noticed it.

26:01 Pretty quickly and then we were told about it to buy the people who own the property. I think I don't know if we spot at that particular because it was lies, you know, it's hell trees big tree was he told us at that time and that's

26:17 20 some-odd years ago that it it was the largest tree. It was registered as the largest pine tree and circumference and recently. We we measured it was 18 ft. So I know it's massive but it is is beautiful. It's a part of that piece of property just now next to the reservoir is secluded. You you live you live real real country old country to see a city girl. You come to Providence you have that sense of feeling of Wooster.

26:50 Because of my love of animals I never had kids. I never wanted kids. I didn't even like kids but always animals have been in my heart from Santa and to be able to be down there and just

27:04 Oh my God have whatever. I want. Nobody bought his us and just to see the creatures to be able to even though we're not supposed to feed wild animals. We do, you know, we feed the deer in the winter time in.

27:18 Oh, I just love all of that so much. I love them. I love them. It bothers me to see what man does to them but I try to make do my best to help them along when we there anyways.

27:31 Do you want to tell Christine what it means for you to have her in your life?

27:37 Oh.

27:41 She's changed my life in a lot of ways that the time you came along.

27:46 I was so been alone almost 17 years and

27:53 I was pretty much accepting that that was the way it was going to be. I was 61 then so I didn't expect a relationship like we've got to come along it was

28:06 I've been through a couple of a marriage in the end of their marriage prior to that and I just didn't think anybody was going to come along and move me in the way that you did you touch my heart the way that you have. It just wasn't something that I expected. I was surprised really surprised at my age because that just doesn't happen when you're that age don't expect it to it. Anyway, but surprise surprise surprise and then retrospect I'm not that surprised because of who you are because of who I am we walk the same path. It was inevitable that we bumped into each other somewhere along the way and interesting circumstances as to how we met because of someone else who was walking that pass too. So, I'm just glad I'm glad that we came all the met each other in that way and then who was a way in which is like you said earlier probably because we're older

29:06 Could do more readily accept any differences that we have and humbleness. I think something that

29:14 When you're younger whatever, you know you a little bit more for yourself or Headstrong.

29:27 So yeah, I feel just as fortunate as you do, you know that are not relationship in and out of love.

29:35 You know, it's not perfect by any means. I mean, you know how I know I'm hard to get along with you cuz I can teach you but me to hunt good good. We both feel if we're both very intuitive. We both I can tell him anything that somebody else would be rolling their eyes looking for cripes sakes like

30:02 Someone is like I feel someone walks through the kitchen or something like that or I'll tell him that and he's like, yeah really eat. I mean, he's all he asks me questions about it doesn't end.

30:17 We definitely we do walk the same path. That's absolutely for sure. I really believe that in another lifetime. You were probably like a mentor to me or something like that. Even in this life. You still are because of your age and your experience. I think you would have been too busy as a lifetime.

30:41 No, it's not. It's not the intelligence is two spirit and you have that spiritual have that healing spirit and that I get from doing all those past life regressions. I've done with other people. It's

30:58 It's it's it it's it's kind of amazing how how it all works and then none of us truly know you'd only speculate because when I do a past life regression with somebody and they come back and they know they know at least they feel they know. Yeah, and then when I talk to him about in between live sand and they talk a little bit about that and what the plan is for this particular life and they then they talk about that was in the process of achieving it, but they have a

31:27 They've they've opened up to a knowledge and awareness that's within us all and when they open up in that way, they know they come back with a knowledge and awareness but has been

31:42 Sedated so we need to feel with what they're doing in this lifetime. So yeah, I don't think any of us is more advanced than any other. I don't think I don't think I think we're walking a spiritual path and we both girls going to the same location same place. I don't care what you call it what religion or anything else and

32:03 That along that path you intersect with many souls and I'm sure we've passed each other before and maybe interacted probably in another time if not there. So I'm pretty much I'm very much at peace with that, you know when the fact that we met in that.

32:25 You have that you have that occasionally have that.

32:29 Lack of confidence in yourself which to me is a shame because you're so intelligent. You're so wise. He's got such a hot you you just take care of everybody and everything you what you are. Really? What what a Healer is about. Thank you, but I strive to be like the warrior in me, you know, which which I needed to have done so that I could be by myself a better healing. So I'm just glad you got a chance to talk like the whole conversation.

33:11 So I'm thankful for storycorps for having us here. This is awesome. At first I was kind of nervous about the whole thing. I was debating about whether I should talk her.

33:22 Is God his daughter has a whole story also that he usually tells but I'm thinking he always has the floor this time. I'm just going to talk about us and that's fantastic. I think it's wonderful. I appreciate it to thank you very much.