An Ordinary Life

I'm not now, nor have I been in the past, nor will I be in the future a famous person. If you google me

Falling in Marriage

We were friends long before we fell into marriage. We attended different high schools, but we met on the summer camp train from Chicago to Eagle River, Wisconsin. We were going to be counselors at two of the many camps in the north woods.

A few years later, we attended the same University and had a mutual circle of acquaintances. I dated his friends and he dated mine. We spent hours on the phone gossiping about them and commiserating and advising about the problems of young adult dating.

If we didn’t have other plans on a weekend, we would hang out together. We both liked classical and jazz music and movies. I tolerated his shoot-em-ups and he reciprocated with my foreign films. We would go to the hamburger joint where we always bumped into people from my sorority and his fraternity. Sometimes, we shared a table at the library during final week. I would study and he would rustle through a newspaper, loudly. “Let’s go to the movies. Enough with the books!” Grades seemed more important to me and I chided him on his just passing is good enough mentality.

When we first realized a romantic bond, it was convenient but awkward that we were also friends and confidants. Who spoke first? How did we decide on the next step?

We were attending a wedding of one of the couples we both knew. It seemed every week was another. Weddings always made me teary and thoughtful. Here I was, 22 and single. Almost all my sorority sisters abandoned school and were choosing gowns and china and silverware and crystal. My diploma was more important to me than any of the boys I had dated and I was finishing college. I was student teaching and singing with a dance band on the weekends.

A waiter grabbed me off the dance floor in the midst of the hora, circling the bride and groom squealing in raised chairs. “You have a phone call, miss. Sounds urgent.” What could it be? No one in the family was sick.

“Hey!”, said my vocal coach, excitedly. “You got the job. Christmas in Korea with the Bob Hope USO show. It’s a great beginning for a new career.”

Oh, my God. I had to tell my parents, but first I had to tell Loren. He’ll be excited for me. He’s been chauffeuring me home from the ballroom every weekend.

I found him on the dance floor where I had left him. “Don’t go.”, he blurted without even thinking. “Let’s get married!” And we did.