How the Love of Our Lives Began
Today is the forty-second anniversary of the Fabulous Wife and me moving in together.
We’re amazed too. Not only that it’s lasted, but that it’s gone so fast.
We met at NYU in September 1978 in a class called Practical Linguistics. It was not love at first sight. My initial take was “she’s loud.” But after months of talking together, studying together, baking bread together, and doing other things together, I had to concede that first impressions aren’t reliable.
Few men (certainly at that age) had higher standards when it came to life partners. I wanted someone who excelled in all aspects: beauty, intelligence, character, compassion, playfulness. I’d met plenty of women who exceeded The Fabulous Wife in one or two categories, but none who matched her across the board. Plus she possessed a compulsive honesty that impressed me as the necessary foundation for a lasting relationship. Time has borne out that impression: I’ve never had to wonder what she thought or felt, never had to suspect a hidden agenda, never had to decide whether to defy or accede to some connivance. Truthfulness can cut both ways, and there have been times it’s hurt more than it’s helped, but over the long run it’s better than the death by a thousand deceits that befalls most relationships.
My attraction to The Fabulous Wife would not have led anywhere had she not loved me back. No small order, that. I was a vegetarian. I loathed material trappings. I didn’t believe in marriage. And I didn’t want children. These factors disqualified me with ninety percent of women even before they got to my looks and personality. But The Fabulous Wife saw vegetarianism as an opportunity to lose weight. Coming from a home so dense with things some rooms were nearly impassable, she craved simple living. She didn’t believe in marriage, having seen from her parents that honoring the contract didn’t translate to happiness. And except at sentimental moments, she never felt the need for progeny.
What she wanted was someone gentle, wise, and kind, and when she decided I possessed those attributes, she let me know it with the same straightforwardness that has probably astonished everyone who’s met her.
Though The Fabulous Wife’s honesty is the foundation of our relationship, imagination and humor form the structure. There’s some old movie in which a character says, “The only people who face reality are the ones who don’t know enough to duck.” We spend a lot of time inhabiting a world of our own invention. People who know us may have gotten an occasional glimpse of it; were they to see more, they’d be convinced we’re 60-plus going on six (although they may think that anyway).
Punch lines pervade that private world — and our relationship in general, even serving as the vehicle through which we remonstrate with one another. The Fabulous Wife’s sense of humor leans heavily toward the silly. Mine is more traditionally Jewish, a weapon against the pitiless universe. Sometimes we don’t mesh — she strikes me as frivolous, I strike her as stern — but most of the time we fall in sync, and she lets out that unrestrained laugh that startled me so much the day we met in linguistics class.
Appropriately for a pair of English majors, after I moved to California we continued our courtship through correspondence. She returned to Ohio, but soon realized she’d made a mistake. She sought escape to France and England, but when the money ran out she returned to her folks’ home. Our epistolary banter grew more earnest. By the end of 1981 we agreed on a three-week January get-together at my place.
It went spectacularly well. Upon parting we hedged and said we’d have to think about it, but deep down we knew we’d be living together before long. Opposites may attract, but likes have the better long-term prospects, and despite a few pronounced differences (the woman’s favorite color is pink!) we were far more alike than not. What’s more, we each had strengths to cover the other’s weaknesses: she had social skills, I could do math. What the hell, even if it doesn’t pan out it’ll be exciting, I told myself, and within a week confessed that I’d done all the thinking I needed, I was ready to commit. She was ready to take the chance too, although she needed time to prepare her parents for the news. Nearly three months later, on April 27, 1982, she flew to California — and the best part of our lives commenced.
