The Dance on Thoreau Street
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October 1968 – January 1970

"Who is this man? He works at a lumber yard and he talks about pancakes and he watches rivers."

Oh, I have a good one today. So Sarah, my daughter, she's the one who set this whole thing up. She called me last night and she said, Mom, tell them how you met Dad. And I said, Sarah, that's such a cliche. And she said, Mom, just tell it. So fine, fine.

It was 1968, October. I know it was October because Betty, my friend Betty Kowalski, she was my roommate. We shared an apartment on Walden Street. Betty had just had her birthday and she wanted to go dancing. There was this thing at the community center on Thoreau Street, a Saturday night dance. They used to do them once a month. Live band, usually pretty bad. We were 20, which felt very grown up at the time. I can tell you it does not feel grown up looking back. Betty spent, I don't know, an hour on my hair that evening. She had this whole system with rollers and hairspray. Her bathroom smelled like a salon. And she lent me her green dress, the one with the little collar, because I didn't have anything right, and she said, Maggie, you cannot wear a cardigan to a dance. I still had my mother's clip-on earrings, the pearl ones. I'd taken them when I moved out. I don't think she ever noticed. Sorry, Mom. And Betty said I looked like Audrey Hepburn, which was a lie, but a nice lie.

So we get there, and it's the usual crowd. And Betty immediately goes off to talk to, I think his name was Phil. She had a whole Phil situation that fall. I won't get into it. And I'm standing by the punch bowl. There was always a punch bowl. This was 1968, not, you know, anyway. I'm standing there feeling a bit ridiculous in Betty's dress because it was tighter than what I'd normally wear. And this man walks up to me. And the first thing I notice is his shirt because it's this green and brown plaid flannel tucked into these gray slacks. And the combination is just, it's terrible. And he says, would you like to dance? Very serious, like he's asking me to sign a legal document. And I should have said no because I could tell just from the way he was standing that he had no idea what he was doing. But something about — he had these very calm eyes, brown eyes, and these long eyelashes, which always seemed unfair to me, a man having those eyelashes. So I said, OK.

The band was playing — oh, what was it? It was something by the Everly Brothers, I think. Or maybe it was, no. You know what? It might have been Unchained Melody. I used to be so sure about this, and now I'm not. Harold always said it was the Everly Brothers, and I always said it wasn't. And we had this argument for 50 years, and neither of us ever won. So we're dancing, and he steps on my foot, my left foot, and then my right foot. And I said, and I'm not proud of this, Betty would have killed me, she always said I had no filter — I said, are you trying to dance with me or arrest me? Which is a terrible thing to say to someone you just met. But he laughed. He just, he tipped his head back and laughed. And his hand kind of tightened on my waist a little. Not in a — just, you know. And he said, I'm sorry, I really only know how to do this in my kitchen.

After that song, we went outside. It was cold, real October cold. And he gave me his jacket, the terrible flannel. And I remember thinking I probably shouldn't take it, that it meant something to take a man's jacket. But I was freezing in Betty's dress, so I did. And it smelled like sawdust and something else, soap maybe. He worked at Barrett's Lumber on Route 2. I found that out later. We just walked. We walked around the block and then around again and Betty was inside probably wondering where I'd gone and I didn't care. He told me about, actually this is funny, the first real thing he told me about was his mother's pancakes. This blueberry pancake recipe she had. He was very passionate about these pancakes. I thought, this is either a very strange man or a very honest one. We were married 14 months later, January 1970 at St. Bernard's, wicked cold. But I'm skipping. I do this. I jump to the ending. Let me go back.

We walked for, I don't know, maybe two hours. He walked me home the long way, down Monument Street past the old North Bridge, which you would never do. It's completely out of the way. But neither of us said anything about it. We just kept walking. And at some point I realized my hands were shaking. Not from the cold, just, I don't know. I put them in the jacket pockets so he wouldn't see. And there was a moment. I forgot about this until just now. We were passing the bridge and he stopped and looked at the river. And he said something about how the water looks black at night, but if you wait, your eyes adjust and you can see it moving. And I thought, who is this man? He works at a lumber yard and he talks about pancakes and he watches rivers. I knew by the end of that walk. I don't know how else to say it. I just knew.

Tommy said I came home looking like I'd been hit by a bus, and I said, Tommy, I think I have been. I called Betty the second I got in. She picked up on the first ring. She'd been waiting. She was furious I disappeared. I told her everything, and she kept saying, the lumberyard guy? The plaid shirt guy? And I said, Betty? I'm going to marry him. And she said, Maggie, you've known him three hours. And I said, I know. Betty was my maid of honor. She wore the green dress. His shirt was better.

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People: Harold, Betty Kowalski, Sarah, Tommy, Phil