September 27, 1985: The Wedding

Do you remember back to April 15 of this year? You might have been doing your taxes, or you might have been reading this post about how I met my husband on that date 25 years earlier.

From then until now is how long we’d known each other when we were married.

It was wonderful to love and be loved. But moving so quickly was out of character for me—I used to tell people I’d taken longer to pick out shoes. I was 42 and never married, and I had lived alone nearly 20 years (and liked it). I spent the latter part of the summer processing this enormous change and following Peter’s lead in getting ready for it. We tidied up my house and put it on the market. To spruce up the townhouse where I would join Peter and nine-year-old Abby, we did some painting, carpeting, and wallpapering. Oh yes, and we negotiated about furnishings.

* * *

The St. Paul Saints used to have a PA announcer who would follow any mention of a coming marriage with an admonishment to the groom: “Say goodbye to your friends and your stuff.” We laughed every time he said it, because we knew there was truth in it.

Peter didn’t have to get rid of any friends, but when it came to furnishings I was sure that most of my stuff was better than most of his stuff. He had sturdy favorite chairs he’d purchased at flea markets and estate sales and lovingly reupholstered. All these years later, he still has them. Just not in the living room.

A lot of other stuff bit the dust. His ceramic flamingos, which have since returned to a place of honor. A 50’s-era ashtray featuring a lounging lady with her skirt up, which has not. Large plants, which we moved to let in more light—healthier for me, but not so good for the plants. I hurt his feelings when I didn’t appreciate his treasured belongings and leaned too hard on “tasteful” choices. In my defense, I was moving into “their” space, and it felt important to create a sense of myself within it.

Much of our “stuff” did coexist. For example, my big slab pots lived nicely next to his ever-so-delicate Lladro porcelains. In fact, we take great pleasure in the fact that over the years our tastes have merged and we’ve selected many new pieces that blend strength and delicacy. (And after we were married 20 years we finally bought a set of living room furniture together.)

* * *

We wrote our own vows, using an outline provided by a minister I knew from work. We sent new versions back and forth using the same new technology that had brought us together over a work project. The vows were promises to one another. The minister asked us to please mention God in a couple of places.

On Friday, September 27, Peter went to work as usual. I took the day off to arrange a few flowers and try to steady my nerves. A little after 6:30 p.m. Peter, Abby, and I arrived at the home of my friends Carol and Michael and their children, Dan and Maia. The minister arrived a few minutes later, as did Peter’s friends Jim and Sharon. Exactly at 7 the sun came out from behind a cloud and angled its way through the living room window, landing just in front of the fireplace. We emerged from the kitchen, took our places in the sunlight, and pledged to love one another to the best of our abilities.

Summer 1985: Getting to Know You

Most people know each other pretty well when they get engaged. We had known each other two months, and had only been dating for half that time, so there were many moments over the course of the summer when we discovered things about each other--or about ourselves. Some of these moments also set things in motion for our future.

Fruit tarts vs. fish fillets. I've already mentioned that Peter did--and does--all the cooking and laundry and other what we used to call "woman's work." Meanwhile, I drove the boat and cleaned the fish. One weekend I went to my family's cabin without him. While I was gone he made "fancy French fruit tarts" for a party we were attending Monday evening at my boss's home. The way Peter told it, he was toiling at the kitchen counter with his complicated French cookbook and lovely fresh fruit when I strolled in, slapped down a handful of fish fillets, and commanded, "Fry these up for dinner." I don't think I commanded. But I may have placed the plastic bag of fish in or near the area where he was working with French pastry. It became a motif of our conversations at the party, underscoring his devotion to me and our openness to mixed gender roles. And as he reminded me this morning, he has been feeding me regularly for 25 years now.

Career vs. family. Shortly after we got engaged, Peter flew to Providence to interview for a job producing publications for the American Mathematical Society. It would have been a huge career move, and at another time in his life he might have jumped at it. But he didn't want to complicate Abby's life, or our still-new relationship. I was grateful that he didn't ask me to leave my job, family, and friends behind. It worked out for the best for him, too. Within a year or two, he would establish his own business, working from home with a flexible schedule that has made possible our major projects including the carousel and Wild Rumpus Daycare for Grandkids.

What's in a name? I decided very quickly that I would keep my own last name. I'd already built a 20-year career with it, and besides, I had thought for a long time that it was cool to keep one's own name. Which brings me to....

Telling our story. I found myself telling our story again and again, partly because people were genuinely interested and partly because it was a way to process this major life change. Certain details came to represent unique aspects of our relationship...and perhaps, in some ways, to strengthen them. Me keeping my name, him doing the cooking...these details surprised few of our friends but many of our family members.

Punchlines, part a. Sometimes in telling the story I'd go for a little shock value. Example: "Oh, I think I'm just getting married so I can keep my own name." Not true, but fun to say.

Punchlines, part b. "I met him, and two months later we were engaged....I've taken longer to pick out shoes!" This one was very true. In fact, it still is.I have very narrow, hard-to-fit feet, so I mostly buy from catalogs or online. I study styles and shapes and try to figure out what will work for me. Probably half the shoes I've ordered have gone back. In this case, my "impulse purchase" has turned out to be a wise and fabulous investment.

Summer 1985: Setting the Date

In the summer of 1985, I was newly engaged to Peter, whom I’d only met in April. It felt right; we loved each other and we kept discovering ways in which we complemented and completed one another.

We were both elated with our newfound happiness, although my elation also incorporated a large element of surprise and disbelief. We told our friends and family members, one after another. Each telling made it more real, to me at least.

I was telling the story to people at work, and saying I didn’t know how we would possibly plan a wedding for the fall with everything else we had to do. A colleague mentioned that he and his wife had been married privately, and they simply threw a big party a month later for friends and relatives. A light went on.

In late July we went to dinner with my best friends, Carol and Michael, so they could meet Peter. We were having a great conversation when Carol asked, “When are you getting married?” We answered, “Early October, in your living room.” Their looks of surprise were priceless, but the recovery was even better. Carol said, “Then we’d better put a rush on the new carpeting.” The first weekend in October was Michael’s birthday and they had reservations out of town, so we agreed instead on the week before: Friday evening, September 27.

Now we had a date, and lots to do: shop for a ring, find someone to officiate, look at reception sites, start a guest list, plan for my move into the townhouse. Someone had told us that the true test for any couple is whether you can survive wallpapering. We decided to wallpaper both bathrooms. We had fun making the choices and we were both meticulous in our work. Once we figured out how to work together instead of each taking charge, things went fine. Another excellent sign!

I’ve never told him this, but for a number of years I’d been hearing a voice in my head. When I would look into the mirror in the morning, fixing my hair or makeup, the voice would say, Do you love me? It had probably started some time after my mother died in 1980. I tried answering yes, as in yes, I love my self, but the voice continued to ask…until the summer of ’85, when I noticed one day that it wasn’t asking any more.

July 4, 1985: Fireworks

During my single years, I gravitated to Fourth of July festivals and to art fairs, parades, outdoor concerts, etc. If friends were available, I’d go with them; other times I went alone. Sometimes I thought it might be more fun if I had a special guy to share the experience.



So in 1985, with just such a man in my life, I suggested we go to Taste of Minnesota, a festival on the state capitol grounds featuring food, music, and fireworks. We went early and spread our blanket in a good spot. The food wasn’t wonderful, but people-watching was. As it grew dark, the Minnesota Orchestra played classics…1812 Overture, Stars and Stripes Forever, something by Aaron Copeland…all stirring and beautiful and perfectly suited to the occasion. If memory serves, they ended with the 1812 and started the fireworks just then. Huge chrysanthemums and fountains filled the sky overhead, and we oohed and aahed with the rest of the crowd. The finale might have been romantic, except that the skies opened up. Suddenly thousands of people were bumping and jostling, hoping to get out of the rain, hurrying in different directions toward their cars. We rushed, too, until we recognized the futility: first, we were already soaked, and second, once we got into the car and pointed toward the bottled-up freeway it would be stop-and-go traffic for an hour.

That’s when I understood why Peter didn’t like big, crowded festivals. We became a family in search of accessible fireworks. (And yes, I'm breaking with the tradition of my "25 years" stories by acknowledging the obvious: we are together, and celebrating the 25th anniversary of our courtship and marriage.)

We found a more distant vantage point for the Taste show—a church parking lot at the top of a ridge overlooking downtown. But a year later, the shrubs on the ridge had grown tall, blocking much of our view, and the mosquitoes were so thick we left early. In 1988, on the return leg of a family trip to Boston, we watched fireworks with my college friend Kathy and her family in Grafton, Wisconsin. And for a few years we headed over to the east bank of the University of Minnesota, sat on a hillside, doused ourselves with Avon Skin-So-Soft (original formula, an excellent mosquito repellent), ate fresh cherries, and watched the fireworks set off at the state fairgrounds. We had that down pat, until they cancelled the show.

In 1993, we bought season tickets to the new St. Paul Saints. And guess what? They have fireworks three times every season: Memorial Day, Independence Day, and the final game of the year. And fireworks at the Saints means huge shells, lots of them, and a couple of false finales so good than when the real finale comes, you find yourself laughing because it’s so fabulous and because you’d been silly enough to think the show was over 10 or 15 minutes earlier.

Yes, we’ll be together tonight, watching from our first-row seats, wiping ash off our faces if the breeze blows in from right field. We’ll be wishing the grandkids could stay up late enough to join us. We’ll be saluting the flag and humming the patriotic tunes because we learned during the 1960s that it’s not a good thing for liberals to abandon the symbols of patriotism to the right. And we’ll be reveling in the fact that this comfortable life we’ve built together includes fabulous fireworks two miles from home.
 

June 23, 1985: I could live here…

Having proposed June 14, Peter’s idea was that we marry in the fall. I wasn’t ready to commit so quickly (we’d only met in April). Besides, I was going to be much too busy to plan a wedding. I was chairing the YWCA women of the year selection process and would emcee a December award luncheon for 600 people. A few days later, I would head to Chicago, chairing three days of conference programming for college and university publications people. Both of these would require time and attention for months, on top of my busy job.

Peter pointed out that when Abby returned from her Mom's for the start of school we would have much less opportunity to see one another. With both of us so busy, our relationship might indeed fail. On the other hand, if we were together he could cook for me and give me foot-rubs while I worked on my projects. I had to admit that sounded nice.

"Why don’t I just move in?" I asked. “No,” he said. “I want my daughter to know you are special, that I respect you. You’re not moving in until we’re married.”

One night we were sitting in the living room at my house, the house I had just furnished. It had character and beauty, and it was perfect for me. It would even work for two. The living room and master bedroom were huge, and the bathroom had a long counter with two sinks, two mirrors, two sets of cabinets. But the second bedroom was tiny, and we couldn’t quite make the place work for three. Plus, it was in the wrong school district; we wanted Abby to stay in her grade school. I began to cry at the thought of leaving my house. “You know what that means, don’t you?” he said. “You’ve decided to move and you’re beginning to grieve.” I couldn’t argue with that. I let myself cry a while longer.

They lived in a townhouse in a first-ring suburb. While I hated the whole idea of townhouses and suburbs, I hadn’t yet been there! He invited me to come over on Sunday afternoon, June 23. He and Abby spent the morning cleaning and they showed me around; then he made dinner for the three of us. After she went to bed, he put on a mix tape he had just made. It started with a song about flirtation and worked its way through romance to something along the lines of let’s spend our life together.

The day was drawing to a close. “What do you think,” he asked. “Could you live here?”

The townhouse was plain; I didn’t love it. But we didn’t have to live there forever, and the question wasn’t really about the townhouse.

“Yes, I think I could live here,” I said.

The next morning at work I received orchids. I called to thank him. “Well,” he said, “It’s not every day that someone accepts my proposal of marriage.”

Omigod, I thought. What have I done?

June 14, 1985: To the Lake (part 2)

I had been dating Peter about a month when I invited him to my Happy Place: our family’s rustic lake cabin in northern Minnesota. On the drive north, we had a long conversation about our relationship. Meanwhile, I pictured a quiet, romantic weekend of fishing, walking in the woods, relaxing, and listening to lovely loon sounds. His version included carefree gamboling and skinny dipping.

We were both in for a surprise.

As we arrived at the cabin, so did two of my brothers and their families! Oops. There went the quiet, and the, um, gamboling. We all laughed and agreed to make the best of it. We divvied up the three bedrooms (none with any real privacy), and a couple of kids slept outside in a tent. Peter and my sisters-in-law said they would take turns cooking for everyone. Dinner was loud and chaotic, as was the after-dinner conversation.

At about 10 o’clock, Peter whispered, “Let’s go sit on the dock.” It was a clear night, and in the darkness the Milky Way arched across the sky. We could hear small animals splashing at the water’s edge, and from time to time a fish would jump. A light breeze kept most of the mosquitoes at bay.

Peter sat behind me and pulled my shoulders so I was leaning back against him. He returned to the subject of the day. “I’ve been looking for someone for a long time,” he said, and then drew on a figure of speech (he may have used a washing machine as his metaphor; I don’t remember). “I’m a good shopper; I do a lot of research and when I find the model that has everything I’m looking for, I know it. I don’t have to keep looking.” He went on to say he’d been dating lots of women, looking for the right one. “Sometimes I could tell before I was in the door that this wasn’t a woman I wanted to spend even one evening with. But you have everything I’ve been looking for. You are the one.” He took a deep breath and said very deliberately, so I would know he was serious,

“Will…you…marry…me?”

I let the moment sink in for a long while. Then I told him I couldn’t answer yet. I had not been looking. I needed time—not just to get to know him, but to know myself in combination with him. I said he should ask me again in the fall—if we were still together. He asked what I meant. I said that with one exception, my previous relationships had not lasted that long, so I had trouble comprehending this rapid commitment. If we were still together by September, then it would make sense to talk about marriage.

He knew better than to press for a different answer. We looked at the stars and drank in the sounds until the mosquitoes began to bite. Then we went inside and won a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit.

There will be more to this story. Meanwhile, I wish to note that these photos are not mine.

June 14, 1985: To the Lake (part 1)

Since our initial meeting in April and our first lunch date in May, Peter and I had had three dinners and an afternoon walk around Lake Harriet. Then I spent a weekend at my family’s cabin, and when I got home Sunday evening, June 9, he called and asked to come over.

“Nope,” I said, “not possible. I haven’t showered all weekend. I have fish guts on my jeans.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “I just want to see you; I can’t stay long. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

I could have used that half-hour to wash my hair or change my jeans. Instead, I read the mail, checked the newspaper headlines, fed the cats. When he arrived, I told him that with any other guy I’d dated, I would have rushed to clean up. “That’s a good sign,” he said. “You’re comfortable with me.”

We went to dinner Monday night, and on Tuesday he got tickets to The Magic Flute.

Then I took a Really Big Step: I invited him to the lake for the weekend. I loved our rustic cabin “up north,” as we say in Minnesota. It was my escape, my sanity, my connection to nature. I never invited casual friends. This seemed too soon, but if he didn’t like it I may as well know now. I explained it carefully (no electricity, no running water, nothing fancy) so he’d be prepared. On Thursday evening we shopped for groceries, stocking up appropriately and added a few treats, like the hard candy that—like my Mom before me—I tucked into my pockets before going fishing.

We left mid-afternoon Friday; the drive would take about four hours. There was small talk, of course, but he directed much of our conversation to our relationship. He liked that we could be equal partners; we were well matched intellectually and I had enough confidence to stand up to his strong New York personality. I liked, a little too much, the fact that he was already keeping house for himself and Abby, and he said if we ever got together he would just keep on doing the cooking, laundry, etc.

I loved that he laughed at my jokes; we really enjoyed each other’s senses of humor, including puns and wordplay. At one point, about halfway to the lake and just before we stopped to buy bait, he was talking about…something, and I didn’t have much to add. I heard myself say, “One is as voluble as the other is taciturn.” It was an observation, not a joke, but it cracked him up. Even a straight line can be humorous when two people get each other.

He was 37 and had remained open to the possibility of having more children if he met someone who wanted them. At 42, I didn’t. He said he’d get “snipped” if I was committed to the relationship; I didn’t have to answer right then. I was both moved and taken aback by how quickly he was moving into serious territory, when to me everything was still so new and unexpected.

There would be other surprises that evening.

May 25, 1985: the Dinner Date

We’d met at a business meeting April 15 and had several meetings and a lunch date. He went out of town for a conference, and then we made a date for dinner.

He showed up with a box of Frango mints from Marshall Field in Chicago, happy to show he’d noticed when I said I liked them.

He also brought a bouquet of mixed stems…a large allium, a blue delphinium, a handful of pinks and purples and whites and greens. I popped them into a vase, thinking I shouldn’t dawdle. But he arranged them, saying we should take a moment to appreciate them at their best. It was a point he would make often.

Allium

The day had been sunny and warm, and the restaurant seated us at an outdoor booth, with an open arbor above our heads. Before long, it began to drizzle. He went off to ask that we move indoors, and when he came back he sat next to me, protecting my head with his jacket while we waited for an inside table.

Pointing out that he had revealed more about his life than I had about mine, he asked many questions. When I told him at some length about my mother, who had died five years earlier, I found myself crying a little. Damn. What is this? I hardly know this man, and yet I’m so unguarded I’ve slipped right into tears. On our lunch date, he’d had a catch in his voice while talking about his father. At the time, I’d been a little skeptical about his sincerity, but here I was, and I knew I was not playing a game.

Delphinium

He called a couple of days later. It was Memorial Day, and he was taking his nine-year-old daughter to roller-skate around one Lake Harriet. Abby skated while Peter and I walked, and we stopped periodically to chat. She was bright, energetic, mature, polite, and charming. I couldn’t tell what she thought of me, but she was being nice and I hoped we were hitting it off.

Apparently she hadn’t thought much of some of the other women he had dated. And there were lots of them. He told me he’d spent the last couple of years looking pretty seriously for someone to settle down with. I wasn’t looking; I had learned to enjoy my own company, something I thought everyone should be able to do. I had settled comfortably into single life with two cats in a house I’d just purchased, and which I loved.

We made a date for the following Friday night, and then the Thursday after that. On one of those evenings, we went to a Mexican restaurant and emerged into one of those long Minnesota evenings when the setting sun turns half the sky rosy red. As we reached the car, he said, “I’m going to throw a monkey wrench into your well ordered life.”

I felt my face blush as red as the setting sun.

May 8, 1985: The Lunch Date

Previously in our series…
On April 15, 1985, my designer and I went to our typesetting vendor’s plant to complain about a messed-up, overbilled job. Their new man said if we gave him a chance to do the next issue right, we wouldn’t regret it.

The new typesetter, whose name was Peter, came to my office for two meetings. With my staff, we talked about new procedures we would use to (1) type our stories on the computer and add codes for headlines, bold, italic, etc., (2) send the files to the typesetter by modem, and (3) get back proofs on paper, which we’d mark for corrections in the usual manner. There shouldn’t be many corrections, we agreed, because they were capturing our files rather than re-keyboarding everything. We talked about how much quicker and easier it was going to be to get material ready for our magazine.

I enjoyed these meetings. I thought it was because the process was so cutting-edge and fascinating. My staff was pleased enough with the new procedure, but confused about why I was so animated and chatty.

As the second meeting ended, Peter waited while my staff left. “We don’t have any reason to meet here again,” he said, “but I’d like to call you for lunch….I mean, personal.”

Oof. I was totally unprepared. I don’t date, I thought. I don’t have time for that. But by the time he calls I can think up an excuse. “Okay,” I said.

He called about 20 minutes later. “How about May 8?” Crap, I didn’t think I’d need that excuse so soon. “Okay,” I said.

On May 8 Peter picked me up at my office and we went down the street to Ciatti’s Italian restaurant. We talked a lot about our families—he was the youngest of six, I was the oldest of six. As he talked about his father, who died when Peter was 14, he got a little catch in his voice and teared up a little. Smooth, I thought. He’s doing a Nancy Reagan to show his sensitive side. Am I a bad person for doubting his sincerity?

The tab came with a couple of chocolate mints. He passed his to me, saying he didn’t like mint and chocolate in combination. “Oh, I love it,” I said. “Every time I get to Chicago I go to Marshall Field to buy Frango mints.”

“I’m going to Chicago next week for a conference,” he said. “Maybe we can get together for dinner after I get back.”

"Okay," I said. And this time I wasn't thinking about making an excuse.

Update: For the record, apparently May 8 was the day he asked me out, and May 16 was our actual first lunch date. I was relying on memory; he found his 1985 calendar!

April 15, 1985: The Meeting

The date: April 15, 1985. At 10 a.m. my graphic designer and I met with the company that did the typesetting for our college's alumni tabloid. We had gotten our first computer at the office, and sent files of all the stories to the typesetter. The process should have been faster and cheaper than the old system, when typesetters had to retype everything into their machines. But they had messed it up, needlessly keyboarding a lot of stuff, introducing errors, and then charging us to correct their mistakes.

On this morning, the company's sales manager and account rep introduced us to a third person--a man who had joined the company less than an hour earlier. "He knows a lot about this process," they said. "He is taking over this department." He looked through the file, including my letter of complaint. "You're right, we messed up your job," he said. "We'll give you a five-hundred-dollar discount. And I promise that if you give us another chance, you won't regret it."

Okay, I said.

With that, the new guy asked the sales manager to take us on a tour of the plant. The first stop was called "the service center." It was a table on which incoming jobs were dumped. "When a guy--and they're all guys--oh, we had a lady once but she quit--is ready for more work he comes to this table and grabs a job." I rolled my eyes. So did the man who had just joined the company. We were both thinking, What, there are no women qualified to type? And wasn't that guy just a little defensive? Followed by Wow, they just pick up whatever job they like? What about priorities? Scheduling? (We know we were both thinking this because we compared notes later.)  

The tour ended and the new guy offered to take us to lunch, to make up for our inconvenience on the job that had gone wrong. The designer and I accepted, and the account rep joined us. We went to a restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, the temperature got up to an unseasonable 81 degrees that day, and I was wearing my short-sleeved turquoise belted polyester dress.

We ate and talked, and eventually the designer and the account rep headed for the ladies' room. The guy and I continued to talk, talk, talk. He and his daughter had season tickets to the Children's Theater. I had season tickets to the ballet. He had been at Woodstock. I had beaten Bob Dylan in a talent contest. He'd been a hippie. I'd fancied myself a radical and voted for Eldredge Cleaver for president in 1968.

The designer and account rep finally came back to the table, and it was time to leave. I found out later they were wondering just what was going on between the two of us--the conversation was of no interest to them, and yet we were totally engrossed.

We've been celebrating the anniversary of our first meeting for 25 years now.