In March, just a few weeks after the kids and I had moved back into town, my uncle Calvin and his wife, Jan, stopped by on a Sunday evening. There was a new bad auditioning at the M-bar and they asked me to go with them to listen to it. I got one of the teen-agers living downstairs to baby-sit for a couple of hours.
The band was not memorable, in fact I don't think the bar hired them. But...something memorable did happen that night. I met the man who would become my husband...and would be my best friend for the rest of my life.
I think I mentioned before that I knew most everyone who went to the M-Bar. Calvin, Jan and I were sitting at a table against the wall listening to the music. I was not in a dancing mood that night and was drinking cokes. When I looked around, this guy sitting at a table against the opposite wall was looking at me. Every time I looked his way, he was watching me. At one time we made eye contact, and I felt a thrill run through me clear down to my toes. I had never seen him in there, or anywhere else for that matter.
He was the best looking man I had ever seen. He only stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall with a muscular, slightly stocky build. Black hair. Dark brown eyes. Dark complexion. Unlike most of the men there who wore casual clothes, mostly khaki pants and pull over shirts, this stranger was wearing brown dress pants, white shirt with a skinny tie and tan sports coat. I asked several people if they knew him but nobody did.
A couple of days later I had a phone call at work. Fran, a girl I had gone to school with, worked at a local restaurant. She called and said this guy was asking questions about a girl he had seen at the M-Bar on Sunday night. From his description, she said it sounded like me. He asked her if she could introduce us, if it was okay with me. Of course, it was! Fran told him that I usually brought my kids into the restaurant on Saturday afternoon for ice cream and he said he would be there.
As it turned out, I was not able to go to the restaurant on Saturday for some reason or other. On Sunday, because it was an unseasonably warm day, the kids and I went for a walk. We stopped by to see Fran and I apologized for not showing up the day before. While we were talking, HE walked in. Fran was busy and didn't make it back over to my table. I guess HE got tired of waiting for a formal introduction because he walked over, pulled out a chair and introduced himself. He said, "I'm Joe Wussles, and I just have to tell you that you're the best looking woman I've ever seen." I blushed and my kids giggled, but I managed to stammer out that I was Lori Reed and these were my kids, Tammy and Buddy. He said Fran had given him my phone number and asked if he could call me sometime. Sure, I said. Then he left.
The kids and I started walking home just as it started to drizzle rain. We had walked perhaps a block when this blue car stopped beside us with two men in it. The passenger window rolled down...and I saw that Joe was driving. He asked if we'd like a ride home. I told him it was only a couple of blocks, that we were fine walking in the rain. He drove off...but drove by us at least three times before we got back to our house.
Later that evening, he called and we talked for only a few minutes since I was getting the kids ready for bed. An hour later he called back...and we talked for at least an hour. For the next couple of weeks, Joe called every night. He was a student at Eastern Michigan University there in Ypsilanti and was only in town through the week, going home to Highland Park every weekend. Since I didn't date or go out through the week, the telephone calls were our only contact for awhile.
Then, one Saturday night at the M-Bar, he walked in. I was shocked. I knew that on weekends he worked at his family's bar in Detroit. He sat with Carol and me for a little bit, then asked me if I would go someplace quieter with him. Of course, I would. For the first time in my life, I left the bar with a man. As we walked out, I could see jaws dropping in disbelief.
He said he had asked his mother to get another bartender that night because he had to get back up to Ypsilanti for something important. We went to the Bomber restaurant and sat there for four hours drinking coffee and talking and holding hands.
Except for our nightly phone calls, now even on weekends he called me from home, we didn't see each other. Then he asked me to the prom in May. He was substitute teaching at Lincoln High School and had to chaperone the senior prom. I agreed to go and as soon as I got off the phone, I panicked. What could I wear? I didn't own any fancy clothes. And I didn't know anybody who would know what a chaperone wore to a prom.
I ended up going to the local Goodwill Store and buying a frothy blue cocktail dress and had a pair of white heels dyed to match. Joe showed up in a black suit and was so handsome, I nearly swooned when I saw him. Later, he told me I was so beautiful that his heart plummeted to his feet when he saw me. We were already half in love with each other, but that night we both tumbled the whole way.
From then on, he stopped by my apartment every evening and got to know and love my kids. They soon loved him as much as I did. He still had to work at the bar in Detroit on Friday and Saturday nights, but every couple of weeks, Carol and I, or sometimes just I, went to his bar. My teen-age cousin, Alta, had gotten into the habit of spending Saturday nights with me, so baby-sitting was no problem.
One Sunday nightafter we'd been seeing each other for over a year, he called me. He said he was still at home and wouldn't be back to Ypsi for awhile. His semester had ended but he had signed up for summer classes. When I asked why he wasn't coming back, he was very vague. The phone call upset me. I thought he was dumping me. I didn't hear from him the rest of the week and I cried every night.
On Saturday, he called and wanted me to drive up Highland Park and meet him at his house. I was ecstatic! Although, I knew his mother and uncle from the bar, I had never been to his house, so I thought this might be a good omen.
Skipping a lot of details to keep this from becoming a novel, Joe and I left his house and went to a park. Sitting at a picnic table, he said he had something important to tell me but didn't know how to go about doing it. Just spit it out, I said...again thinking I was getting dumped. Then he told me he had epilepsy and the reason he hadn't gone back up to Ypsi was because he'd had a seizure the last Saturday and wrecked his car. When he called me on Sunday, he had just gotten home from an overnight stay in the hospital.
He said his mother had been nagging him to tell me about the epilepsy for months, but he didn't know how. He had been thirteen years old when he had a seizure during a basketball game and was diagnosed with grand-mal epilepsy. He was on medication and the seizures were generally well controlled, but he still had an occasional seizure. I assured him that his epilepsy made no difference in my feelings.
to be continued
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment