Photo by Melissa Swanson
Nancy and I actually met each other sixteen and a half years ago in September of 1983 at Simon’s Rock College. I was sixteen, Nancy was fifteen. Our first class together was elementary functions. It might not have been possible for two people to make less of an impression on each other than we did. Nothing happened between us right away. Or that month, semester, year or even (almost) that decade. On the 31st day of December 1989, Nancy and I found ourselves at a mutual friends’ house (Katy & Jon) sharing (platonically – for the time being) a futon, on the floor, in their miniscule living room - with another person.
This is not to say that in the intervening period we were
strangers – hardly. We shared our posting, for a time, as Residence
Assistants. Our girlfriends shared a suite in the dormitory. One of her best
friends was the woman I lived with for several years. In 1988, while working
weekdays in upstate New York and living weekends in Somerville, MA, I even shared her
apartment (in her absence) when, after dinner at Katy &
Jon’s, I found myself too tired to navigate back to my temporary lodging 30
minutes away.
However, it was not until that fateful New Year’s Eve (remember the futon) that we realized we might have a fancy for one another. At the time Nancy was living in Philly, and I in Boston. It took a solid six weeks of all night telephone calls to tide us over until we could see each other in person again, as we each had to head home on New Year’s Day.
Well worth the wait, we now consider our anniversary to be the night I got off the train at 30th Street Station (cue the violins), and she leapt into my arms. The balance of the weekend, after the Indian food, is something of a haze, but I think it included a lot of staying home and some yummy pesto. (If you’ve never seen 30th Street you don’t know what you’re missing – like Grand Central but with windows)
So now Nancy and I have been living together since 1992, here in Seattle, WA since the end of August 2000. We live here with our favorite people (besides you, of course) our Kids (Emerald, Carley and, in our hearts, Tristan, Shane, and Turtle).