W
e found each other online, but agreed to meet for the first time at a bookstore in San Jose. I agreed to carry a copy of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice so that she could recognize me. The password was: “There will be rain in Salinas tomorrow.” The countersign was: “Good for the crops.” I figured that if this lady went along with that she’d go along with just about anything.
We got married wearing Hawaiʻian leis on Edith’s picking platform in the same fig tree I had climbed as a boy.
We got married to Over the Rainbow melding into What a Wonderful World, sung by IZ (Israel Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole) with his ukulele. That would become our song for life.
We remodeled the last homely house, got a puppy, and we were set. One story threads into another, and after a time I began to realize that we have had a pretty interesting time of it.
Today I’m married to a woman who thinks I’m only a little irritating and sings the refrain from the Yale Fight Song Boola! Boola! to the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark (or sometimes Yellow Submarine) when she thinks no one is listening. And sometimes she even wanders off into her own version of the harmony.
More than anything else, we talk. Often enough about our respective passions but we also delve into other disciplines, such as philosophy and sociology—what makes us tick so loudly. So, you know, it all paid off. So here I am, home at last and happy. Bingo, bango, bongo.
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