My wife and I fell in love at first sight. It was April 17th, 1986. It was a Thursday. We had both gone to the local Baptist church for their singles group and to play volleyball. It was the first time either of us went. It was the last time either of us went. We weren’t single anymore. I guess the group did its job. Or maybe it failed miserably. But without a doubt, Jennifer and I, ages 23 and 19 respectively, were madly in love.
Actually, we had seen each other before. The prior Sunday, April 12th, at church service, we sat at rather opposite ends of the same pew. I was sitting with a family I had recently met. She was sitting alone. We glanced at each other casually, and then did an immediate double take. And then a triple. Then, she started waving. It took me a minute to realize that she was waving to the family I was with, but looking at me. Unfortunately, the pastor took that moment to start praying. It was a long prayer. I was a good boy. I kept my eyes closed. He stopped. I looked. She was gone. After church, I looked all over for her. But she was gone.
But the story should really start a little earlier. I had recently moved to Door County, Wisconsin. At church, I met a matronly woman who headed most of the young people’s activities. She invited me to have dinner with her family at which time we talked about other people my age. In passing, she mentioned a certain Jennifer. For whatever reason, I continued turning the conversation back to the details of this verbally elusive creature. For reasons I understood later, she kept turning the conversation back to the details of her daughter who, coincidentally, was also my age.
Meanwhile, Jennifer, recently back to Door County, heard from her mother that there was a new guy in town. In April, in Door County, eligible single men don’t normally appear.
“In addition”, her mother said, “he’s good looking.
“What’s wrong with him?”, asked Jennifer.
This was actually a double conundrum for Jennifer. Here was a good looking, single, apparently eligible man showing up in the most unlikely of spots at the most unlikely of times. There must be a hideous flaw in his person somewhere. But worse than that, she had recently gotten done explaining to God that she was sick of the dating scene and that from this point forward, she wanted to be either single or married. No more of this Mickey Mouse, messing-around, ambiguous, dating sort of stuff. It was to be all or nothing. This angst led to her early departure from church that Sunday.
And I suppose the story could start even a little further back when, just a few weeks earlier, I dropped out of college to go work as a commercial fisherman and Jennifer, after giving downtown Chicago’s lifestyle a full but painful run, came back home to start fresh. But even that, I suppose, is not the true beginning. Jennifer grew up in Door County. I was infatuated with that sliver of rock from somewhere around the time I was 13. Ours was a meeting long in the making.
While we were playing volleyball, she took off her sweatshirt. She claims she knew I was hers from that moment on. Apparently my reaction was less suave than that for which I would have hoped. I, however, moved smoothly on with my best pick-up line ever.
“Do you know we’re standing on the Niagara Escarpment?”, I asked.
It must have worked. I had never tried that line before and I had never been married before. This time I tried it out, she accepted my invitation to dinner the next night, didn’t object when I told her I was interested in marrying her two days later, and agreed to marry me when I proposed nine days after that. My line had worked. We were married on September 6th, 1986. I still love it when she takes her sweatshirt off. And she still loves it when I talk about limestone.
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