It was 1974. A Friday. The previous Saturday we had encountered one another at the Bryn Mawr train station, and when she missed her connecting train out towards her home, we had gone out for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.
But that was not a planned get-together. This was.
We were both coming out from Philadelphia to the Haverford train station. I was to meet her at the apartment of a Haverford College faculty couple where she was "house-sitting" for the weekend. Taking a chance we might be on the same train, I deliberately sat in non-smoking. Little did I know she had similar thoughts, and had gone into a smoking car.
Thus we did not catch up with one another until we disembarked at the Haverford train station, then walked together to the small apartment building on the edge of the campus where she would be staying.
I still have the green 3-piece suit I wore that day 37 years ago. She will not let me dispose of it, although I can no longer get into it, my waist having gone from 31 t0 36, and my weight from 170 to 194.
At least my complexion is better - I had had one of my periodic allergic reactions two days before, and my face was still somewhat swollen. She did not care.
After she dropped off her bag, we walked up Lancaster Pike into Bryn Mawr. The was an H. Winston's, and I took her out for a hamburger. In those days I was living in a rented room, had little money. She was 17, taking off a year between prep school and Harvard, and I was 28.
There are many things to remember about that first date. As we talked, I discovered she knew more about Beethoven than did I, who had actually majored in music and begun a doctorate in musicology before deciding I lacked the scholarly temperament for the field.
Later when we got back the faculty apartment I played some Bach on their piano. I discovered she did not know William Blake, even though she was deeply into literature, especially poetry. I found a copy of his poems on a bookshelf and shared them with her.
Within 2 weeks I was madly head over heels in love with her.
We also were becoming one another's best and and closest friends.
I suppose within a short time we could have had the exchange we remember from a favorite movie, Murphy's Romance.
Sally Fields at the end tells him she's in love for the first time in her life, and James Garner as Murphy responds that he's in love for the last time in his life.
It is 37 years later. We are both older, grayer, heavier.
We are also still together.
Today I have an appointment with a surgeon, and may well be scheduled for surgery.
Does not matter.
Tonight we will go out for a light supper and talk. This time she is buying - after all, she now makes more than do I.
37 years and counting --- hoping and expecting that number will, despite my 65 years, grow much higher as we continue to celebrate these anniversaries.
Peace.