Although I was a smoker, I rode home from Philadelphia in a non-smoking train car, looking for someone with whom I was going to spend time that evening. As I discovered as we approached the Haverford station and I walked toward the connection with the next car, she was riding in the smoking car hoping to encounter me.
She was apartment sitting for a faculty couple with whom both I and her family were close.
She was taking a year off between high school and college.
We had encountered one another at a train station the previous Saturday.
This was now our official first date.
I walked her to the apartment, then we walked into Bryn Mawr to a restaurant for dinner, after which I walked her back to the apartment, where I played Bach, we read some Blake and some Thomas Merton.
Perhaps we are silly in our romantic commemorations. This evening she took me out for an informal dinner. We drove. We talked. We came home.
Tomorrow I teach and she works.
We have been together for more than 41 years.
We still hope it is going to work out.
We still work at it.
Thank you sweetheart.
Peace.