Maple Drive: Ancient Hearts

Part 2 of 9.How I fell in love with my wife 32 years ago. The story of the the nurse who married the waiter and the waiter who married the nurse. The happiest two months of my life.

Photo by Павло Павлюк on Unsplash

⬅️ Chapter 1

It was a Tuesday night. The two of them were seated at table 51. Their seat positions, the ones I would have entered into the computer to let the runners know where to set their food, were #2 and #3, which faced them away from the glass-walled terrace and back in towards the piano and the heart of the restaurant.

I have a memory I don’t entirely trust of seeing them from across the room as they were led across the restaurant floor towards their table. They were alone. English. Both of them were blonde, one more so; both attractive, one more so; both in their mid-twenties.

They asked about white wine by the glass. I made a recommendation. I must have removed the glasses from the place setting because they weren’t ordering by the bottle. I must have threaded the empty glasses upside-down through my fingertips.

When I returned to the table, the prettier girl, the one that I would marry, ordered bacon-wrapped scallops. This I remember for certain, and to this day when there are scallops on a menu and either of us orders them, each checks the other that they’ve noticed. The practical business of love. A quick tug to check that the thirty-year anchor holds fast.

For a couple that was engaged within two months of their first date three decades of marriage must have been a surprise for all involved. Certainly for the parents of the daughter who married the waiter. And, my god, an actor at that. Her siblings, her friends, her coworkers must have thought she was mad as well. In two months America had spun her head.

This is the story of those two months.