was a Saturday. It was late afternoon. I had spent several hours visiting friends on the campus of Bryn Mawr College. I lived not far away, in Rosemont, and I had planned to go into Philadelphia, riding the Paoli Line train, top attend a party to which I had been invited. I was 28 years old, working as a computer programmer analyst, living in a rented room.
As I waited for my train, a familiar person walked past me. I chastised her gently for not saying hello. Her father had arranged for me to spend a good portion of the previous summer at an Episcopalian monastery in Michigan, and I had noticed her around our local parish, spoken with her perhaps a handful of times.
"J,,,", I said, "aren't you going to say hello?"
She apologized, came over, and we began the first extended conversation we had had.
Our train into Philadelphia was late, so she was going to miss her connecting train out to her home on the Media line. Since she would have to wait almost an hour, and I was in town way too early for the party, so I took her to a Stouffer's and we each had a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.
By time she said goodbye, thanking me for the pie and coffee, and boarded her train, I was totally smitten.
And so it began, 39 years ago today.
What this attractive, brilliant young lady did not know is that I had been watching her in church. Her parents and her next oldest sibling, a sister 15 months younger, had noticed.
She did not know I had first noted her several years earlier when she had spent some time with a faculty couple at Haverford, where I had returned as a 25 year old to finish my degree. At the time she was 15, and she and the wife came into a music theory class and I immediately noticed her. When I first told her about that, she did not believe me until I described what she was wearing, and where they were sitting.
I spoke with her parents the next day at Church, and assured myself they would not object were I to invite her out for dinner. The following Friday, she was going to apartment sit for the same faculty couple, and we would meet and walk into Bryn Mawr for dinner - that would be another long conversation, and I suppose some couples would mark that occasion as their anniversary. We note it, we celebrate it.
But September 21 has remained special for us.
Within a few weeks I knew I was head over heels in love with her. But I was 28, she was 17, and I did not want to pressure her.
She was taking a year off before attending Harvard to seriously study ballet. She had never dated anyone else. I explained my feelings then backed off for a while to give her room to reflect, staying in touch by calling her mother each evening.
One evening I called from a bar on the boundary that marked passing between Bryn Mawr and Rosemont, a Villanova U hangout (I lived about half a mile from their campus). Her mother said she had something to say to me.
"First, I love you." Those words struck me like a thunderbolt. Do not ask me the rest of the conversation.
It was a long uphill walk to the house where I had a rented room on Lowrey's Lane. I do not believe my feet touched the ground.
It has not always been smooth sailing. I am a very difficult person, who is still learning what it means not only to give love (that's the easy part) but to accept love.
It took until 1985 until we married, and 12/29 is of course an important occasion which we also honor.
That came after the magical first year, followed by 4 years she was at Harvard, and three at Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship.
We have been in the Washington area since October 1982 because she had had a fellowship here with the National Endowment for the Arts that summer and fell in love with the place.
I am a teacher because she listened to a conversation I had with a friend at a college reunion and persuaded me to explore it.
There was a point not so long ago that it would be fair to say our marriage was in trouble. She pulled out a piece of paper she had carried in her wallet since September 1974 - it was a note from her mother that I had called - to ask her out on that first date on Friday September 27.
I am now 67, she is now 56.
We have been together for a long time.more than 2/3 of her life, more than half of mine.
We have both buried parents during that time - she her mother, me my father.
We have seen siblings have their own marriages fail.
We have friends who are divorced, some more than once.
In January we found out she was ill. We had at that point reestablished our marriage from its shaky condition, we were each other's closest friend. But then it became something different.
We began to understand what it truly means to love. For me it was to surrender my needs and wants to ensure I could take care of her. She came first.
For her it was to let go and trust, to allow herself to be vulnerable, to surrender some privacy so that I could care for her.
She has recovered remarkably from her cancer, enough that soon we will embark on a more aggressive treatment designed to give her the best quality for her remaining life.
She will lose her hair. I reiterated the offer I had made before, to shave my head in solidarity. She does not want me to do it - I would look somewhat weird. While I am inclined to defer to her wishes, I might not.
Hair or nor hair.
Out to a fancy dinner or just a cup of coffee in Starbucks or a late-night supper at the Metro 29 Diner near our home.
Letting the cats claim our attention and crawl all over us.
My understanding her need to be available for a nephew who struggles some with life, her understanding of how much I throw myself into teaching.
My supporting of her intellectual and professional activities. Her affirmation of the importance of my political participation and my blogging - including about our joint journey as a result of her illness.
I have been greatly blessed.
I am loved unconditionally, irrevocably.
I get to spend my life with my best friend.
After 39 years, I think it might last.
What do you think?