I truly owe my life to one person, and that person is now bed-bound and often unable to remember anything that happened a few minutes ago, although she has a pretty good memory of the family. It is in many ways the worst thing that can happen in a relationship. However I would prefer to concentrate on a life that saved me, produced two wonderful daughters and help save a foster daughter, and a love that survived for over 44 years.
When I first met her, I ignored her. She came to my major professor’s office at the University of Florida (she was his wife’s cousin) and I was deep into my doctoral research. The next time I met her was, I found out later, an attempt at match-making by my major professor’s wife. Considering her low-cut dress I should have clued in, but in my socially awkward way I assumed she had a boyfriend somewhere and that I was just a bystander in life. We played Monopoly and I, having played the game numerous times before, destroyed all comers. That would probably been that, but, being the bluegrass and folk music aficionado I was at the time I had decided to go to the Florida Folk Festival in Lake City. In two earlier years I had gone to the Hatchet Creek Bluegrass Festival, but it had been canceled because the various parties could not agree on legal and money issues. I had gotten tired of going to these events alone and so it was that I ran into my eventual wife in Goring’s Book Store, a place I found out we both loved. I said hello and talked with her briefly and then headed out the door. I was half a block away when I thought that perhaps she might be interested in going. It took me a minute or so and then I said to myself that at worst she could say no and I would be no worse off and so I turned around and went back. She had not left and when I asked her if she would be interested in going she said yes!
We had a good time at the festival and toured the Steven Foster Museum, as well as taking a fake steam boat down the Suwannee River. To pay me back she invited me to supper at the house she shared with several other female students, and I followed with an invite to a picnic at Morningside Nature Center in Gainesville. The latter was unfortunately on a miserable, windy and rainy day. We left the park and I drove her back in a round about way through the horse farms south of Gainesville. I had decided to tell her the truth about myself and how I was bound to my parents. She listened intently and I was sure that she would give up on me for good. However, my major professor invited us both to a Christmas party (despite the fact that he was Jewish) and we again had a good time. I took her home and at our parting she kissed me! I was on cloud nine! I never ever thought that I could fall in love or ever have a normal relationship with a woman.
She left for the last week of December to visit her parents in Arizona and I eagerly awaited her return. Meanwhile somebody (I never found out who) had seen me with her and told my mother! She then read me the riot act as to why I could never get involved while she was still alive. She said that I knew how crazy my father was and that she could never live with him by herself. She said that I needed to break it off. I had heard all this before, including the threats of suicide if I ever left. And so I grimly thought that I could not involve another person in my personal hell. When she returned I started to say that she could only be a friend, but that never happened. That day I discovered that she did not care what my parents thought or did. At that moment I could not think of anything but of how much I loved her for being the wonderful person she was. I actually had a girlfriend!
She was at the time in a Ph.D. program in early childhood development at the University of Florida. She had gotten her B.A. from Vassar and had spent some time at two other universities, including being at the University of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention of 1968. She even had taken part in a minor demonstration. She had become suspicious of authoritarian tendencies in government and had rebelled against her parents conservatism, eventually supporting antiwar and conservation activism. By that time I was on the same track and by the election of Ronald Reagan I became a Democrat. She was also really devoted to animals and their fair treatment. I realized that she had a kind and at the same time principled nature. She would occasionally join me in a picnic lunch back of Bartram Hall (the zoology building on the University of Florida campus) and we often drove to various state parks to hike and talk. Gold Head Branch, Ichetucknee Spring, Devil’s Millhopper, O’Leno, and Manatee Springs were our haunts and we enjoyed ourselves greatly. We even camped in the Big Scrub of the Ocala National Forest.
At that point we were into serious courtship and were together every Saturday. I discovered that her parents were biologists and that she was a Florida native, having, like her father, been born in Gainesville. My mother still raged about our association, but I did not listen. My Ph.D. defense was coming up and I needed to put all my efforts into preparing my dissertation and getting ready to defend it. My Saturdays offered hope and relief for both strains. My dissertation was approved, I passed my orals and written tests. Another thing was settled in the November before I finished. I asked her to marry me and she accepted! Our wedding was to be in June and we went through the various official activities to plan for a small wedding to be performed by an Episcopal priest at Morningside Nature Center. I told my mother and as usual she flew into a rage. Meanwhile, my dad, who could always make a bad situation worse, hitchhiked to Lake City and stayed for several days at a gas station. Neither my mother nor I knew where he had went until we got a phone call. I had to drive up and bring him home and my mother went with me. She said that obviously I had to give up on this marriage and when I refused, she threatened to jump out of my car. I stopped the car along the freeway and said that if she was going to act that way I was going back to Gainesville and my father could rot as far as I cared. She then calmed down and we retrieved my father and drove home. On the first of June I walked out the door and never looked back. My love and I were married and went on honeymoon to Cedar Key. We had both, as I was to find out later, jumped off a cliff and it turned out to be the best thing we had ever done. I found eventually that she had a controlling mother as well and the scars were still evident, as they always are.
In the following years we had our trials, but we also had great joys. Our first daughter was born by emergency caesarian section in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where I had a postdoc. She looked exactly like a Gerber baby! The second, also a Gerber baby, in Gainesville, Florida, where I had returned for another postdoc under Willard Whitcomb. After the money ran out I returned to Las Cruces for yet another postdoc that eventually evolved into first a staff position and then a faculty one. Finally I was raised to College Professor and Curator of the Arthropod Museum. Through all this turmoil my love had patiently put up with my often long hours and my trips to scientific meetings and research plots, and raised our daughters. I never objected to her having a career if she wanted it, but she wanted to raise our daughters better than she had been raised and since that was what she wanted I did not get in her way. We picked up a foster daughter along the way and she did a fantastic job of protecting the girl from her narcissistic father. I did have a major part in raising our daughters, but was too often away. When the chance arose I did work on the sidelines to protect our foster, so I was a participating father, just less available than I wanted to be. Our daughters have told me that they always knew that we loved them, despite various bumps in the road. All three have developed into women who are a plus to society. One is a pediatric dentist, one a GIS specialist and our foster now works for a US government agency involved in public health. One has given us a grandson. All have helped in this uncertain time.
I can say with certainty that we never disagreed on raising the girls, nor did we ever disagree on politics or our philosophy of life. There were some arguments over money, mainly caused by my fear of poverty, which I had experienced when my dad was out of work. Still, I could never have asked for a better partner, lover and friend. I celebrate our relationship even as I see it finally fading.
She was and is the love of my life. An amazing person, a great mother and a loyal friend. It gives me great pain to see her as she is now, but I can truly say that from hopelessness she brought me hope, from darkness, she brought me light. I shudder to think what would have happened if we had not met by chance in that bookstore over 46 years ago.
So here is to my love, my friend, my partner. I miss you so much.