The beginning. A Reader’s Digest condensed version.
August 1981. I opened our apartment door, and he took my breath away. I can vividly remember the moment I met Michael and the strangest rush, and the oddest feeling that came over me. Was it love at first sight? Pish posh! It couldn’t be! He was wearing an abnormal amount of brown and wide whale corduroy pants on a humid Wisconsin night. Obviously, this guy was not from our parts. Who was Michael, this quiet guy who was not impressed with my stereo but shared my eclectic taste in music? I was intrigued.
The memories of our brief dating history are over 40 years old yet haven’t faded with time. Not whirlwind experiences but solid, cherished, meaningful, smile and laughter-provoking ones. We were young and not remotely ready for promises of a future together much less a second semester. We had people to meet, lives to live, worlds to explore, poor fashion choices, and hair missteps to make. And we did them all, repeatedly, and over the next five years remained friends.
We were always friends. Good friends. And after a business trip brought me to Vermont, with a stopover in Boston for dinner with my friend, things changed. When we left the restaurant it began to snow, but before we parted Michael put Frank Sinatra on the car stereo, and we danced in the parking lot. He always believed that was the night he swept me off my feet, he was pretty proud of that move, but he was wrong. That happened five years prior with far less effort but this time around, he wasn’t in brown. And it was crystal clear, for better or worse, we were choosing “us”.