I'm here...just in Michigan for the week, along with the Brick and Charley. The Mama has been really struggling in recent weeks, so we decided to spend New Year's Day with her.
Which also meant that we spent our 30th anniversary on the road, driving 18 hours straight through, the last of it via Chicago in mixed rain and snow. Even Taco Bell can have a slight air of romance, when shared in a dark car with a drooling Chesapeake Bay Retriever in the back seat...
All I know is that I am very glad, thirty-plus years ago, a slightly raffish-looking engineer chose my restaurant table to sit down at.
Yes, that's how we met. I was in grad school at the University of Michigan, living in an attic. (I cleaned the family's house and looked after their young teener in return for room and breakfast -- lunch too, if I came home and walked the dog.) I graded papers and acted as class assistant for a professor for extra money; this particular day, I had to read E.M. Forster's Howard's End before class. And the local Chinese restaurant served a mean bowl of fried rice for $1.32. (Sounds cheap -- but it was a lot to me, at the time.)
Enter this tall guy with an army surplus jacket, dark glossy hair nearly to his shoulders, and intelligent eyes. All the tables were occupied, and it was customary to ask to share a table -- so he did, and I did. He kept asking questions while I was trying to read...finally I gave up, and enjoyed talking to this funny, interesting man.
He asked what my full name was. He asked for my phone number.
Unh unh, honey, inner self warned. Who knows where this guy came from. He may be an axe murderer. How can you trust anyone you just met in a restaurant!
So I only told him my first name. Period. And left to go to class.
But he knew I was studying for my M.A. in English Lit. And this guy (if you knew him well, you would know how absolutely out of character this was) went to the English Lit department, told the secretary he had a project with me, and asked for my phone number. (I was one of two Cindys in the English Lit Master's Program at the time...and the other Cindy was a brunette.)
She gave it to him!
When he called and asked me to meet him for lunch, inner self said, Go ahead -- but just lunch. Then he'll go away.
Friends, I was lucky -- I met him in March, and married him the day after Christmas in 1981. And I have been fortunate to go through life with this wonderful man ever since.
Happy Anniversary, Davy! Your wife loves you very, very much.
Which also meant that we spent our 30th anniversary on the road, driving 18 hours straight through, the last of it via Chicago in mixed rain and snow. Even Taco Bell can have a slight air of romance, when shared in a dark car with a drooling Chesapeake Bay Retriever in the back seat...
All I know is that I am very glad, thirty-plus years ago, a slightly raffish-looking engineer chose my restaurant table to sit down at.
Yes, that's how we met. I was in grad school at the University of Michigan, living in an attic. (I cleaned the family's house and looked after their young teener in return for room and breakfast -- lunch too, if I came home and walked the dog.) I graded papers and acted as class assistant for a professor for extra money; this particular day, I had to read E.M. Forster's Howard's End before class. And the local Chinese restaurant served a mean bowl of fried rice for $1.32. (Sounds cheap -- but it was a lot to me, at the time.)
Enter this tall guy with an army surplus jacket, dark glossy hair nearly to his shoulders, and intelligent eyes. All the tables were occupied, and it was customary to ask to share a table -- so he did, and I did. He kept asking questions while I was trying to read...finally I gave up, and enjoyed talking to this funny, interesting man.
He asked what my full name was. He asked for my phone number.
Unh unh, honey, inner self warned. Who knows where this guy came from. He may be an axe murderer. How can you trust anyone you just met in a restaurant!
So I only told him my first name. Period. And left to go to class.
But he knew I was studying for my M.A. in English Lit. And this guy (if you knew him well, you would know how absolutely out of character this was) went to the English Lit department, told the secretary he had a project with me, and asked for my phone number. (I was one of two Cindys in the English Lit Master's Program at the time...and the other Cindy was a brunette.)
She gave it to him!
When he called and asked me to meet him for lunch, inner self said, Go ahead -- but just lunch. Then he'll go away.
Friends, I was lucky -- I met him in March, and married him the day after Christmas in 1981. And I have been fortunate to go through life with this wonderful man ever since.
Happy Anniversary, Davy! Your wife loves you very, very much.
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