The Story of Us: The Real Thing

[copied from dland]

**In 29 days I will be 50 years old**

So it was the summer after high school, and we went to the movies every Saturday night and then out to a diner somewhere for cheesecake. The first movie we saw was The Andromeda Strain, a scifi flick about an alien virus that threatens life as we know it. A real date movie.

It was a pleasant way to spend a summer, but it was a relationship – if you can call it that – that was going nowhere. Never once did he kiss me, or try to. I never could figure out what was going on, but since we were both going off to college in September, I didn’t have to work very hard at it. We would go to college and it would be over.

What I didn’t count on was that he would be at school in DC, I would be at the University of Maryland, just ten miles away, and I would be homesick for a familiar face. So after a few weeks at school, I got in touch with him and we started dating again. I think he came out twice by bus and picked me up and we went into Georgetown, and when we were home, we went to the movies. This went on for a month or two, by which time I wasn’t homesick anymore, and I had had it. I decided that it was over, and then on our last date, after he brought me all the way back to Maryland from DC and had to turn around and run to catch the last bus back, he kissed me. Wow. It was great. And then he was gone.

But I had already decided. I sat down and actually wrote him a “Dear John” letter, and sent it. I justified this to myself somehow, probably by saying “Well, I’ll never see him again anyway,” and let it go. I started seeing someone, went with him for about three years, and fully expected to marry him. The fact that he wasn’t Jewish was absolutely irrelevant; the fact that he turned out to be from Mars was not. Once I realized that this was not the guy I ever wanted to be the father of my children, I got it that this meant I didn’t want to marry him after all. Right around Christmas of my senior year of college, I broke up with him, perhaps one of the smartest things I had ever done.

So here I was, unattached. My few friends made it their project to take me to bars and teach me to drink, so that if I ever got to go on any kind of date again, I wouldn’t look like a four-year-old. I was living at home now, my senior year of college at a local state school. I knew I needed to go to graduate school in September, but I missed the application deadline. So I got a job, and planned to in January.

Summer passed. I should say here that although I had no idea where John was, I figured he was somewhere in town, at least for the summer, and I always had it in the back of my mind that I would run into him somewhere. A year or two earlier, driving around town with the soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, I saw John out running. If I had to go someplace, the drugstore, the library, I always made sure I was at least presentable looking. You never know.

It was late August, the 25th, I think, maybe around 7:00. I wanted to go out and buy myself a cassette recorder, but when Jack asked where I was going, I knew that I would get an argument about saving my money if I told him the truth. So I grabbed a couple of books to return and said “To the library.” I bought the cassette recorder, but then I had to get the books out of the car, so I went to the library. When I parked in the car, I saw John’s car there, an adorable and very distinctive red Firebird with a black vinyl top. He was not the sports car type, and it had always seemed an odd car for him. I hoped that maybe his sister was at the library, although I knew it was him.

I looked like crap. Torn cut-offs, stained t-shirt, sandals, probably legs not too recently shaven, no make-up, hair a mess. All I needed to do was step inside the library, drop off the books, and be off. No way I would run into John here, now. I went up the steps and reached to open the door. But before I could, it opened and he came out, and stood right there in front of grungy old me.

We talked for a minute or two, how was school, what are you doing now, etc. I wanted to get away and at least brush my hair, but I was fascinated. And then, after a minute or two of silence, he said “Would you like to go out for a drink later?” Muttering a casual “Sure, okay,” I raced inside, dropped off my books, waited until I was sure he was out of the parking lot, and then beat it back home, showering, dressing, all of it. By the time he came an hour or so later, I was calm, collected, casual. No big deal.

We went to a bar/restaurant he knew of, and had to wait for a table. While we stood there, he reached into a pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes, and offered me one. Wow. I had just quit in June, but I took one. Wow, I thought, he smokes, he drinks. He grew up. What next?

We sat over drinks for a few hours. The conversation was easy and fun. He took me home and we sat on my front steps for maybe another hour, mostly kissing. Turns out he was really really good at that.

He said goodnight, after making plans to see each other the next night. I stood inside my door, watching him get into his car. As he pulled away from the curb, I actually said out loud to no one but me: “Oh my god. I’m going to marry John.” I just knew.

Yada, yada, yada. Within two weeks he had ditched a girlfriend, started graduate school locally, and that was it. He never once in all these years has brought up the “Dear John” letter, and I apologized for it right away. We got engaged the next summer, and married the summer after that. That was 25 years ago this last June.

Here I am, a librarian, and when I tell people that John and I found each other on the front steps of the public library, then this is the part that’s all how romantic, how sweet. And it really was.

Life is not always a picnic, and it is certainly not always what you think it’s going to be. But when I remember how it felt to stand just inside the door that night and watch him pull away and know I was going to marry him, him of all people, I know how great a feeling that was and how right it was, then and now.

P.S. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I’ve also been teaching for the last 25 years in the same high school both John and I (and our sisters, children, etc.) went to. Over the years, I have warned many girls to be careful what they say about the geeky boys in their classes, because you never know who you’ll end up with. And dear Mr. Buckley, our speech teacher, before he retired, was fond of telling the girls in his classes that if they were good students, he would do for them what he had done for me. When they asked what that was, he said that he had gotten me a husband. He took credit for the whole thing.


ENTRY #28