In March 1964, a local girl, Margie,
asked me to go on a blind date with her boyfriend’s brother, Tom, who would
drive. The brothers were from Brooklyn and came up
every week-end, from March to September. Every week Margie would have to find
Tom a date. I said that I didn't know but I'd let her know tomorrow, and the
next day I said, ”Alright, but just this once.”
So
on April 11, 1964, Tom and I had the blind date. I was only 15, but when I came
home after midnight on the 12th, I was 16. This same Tom has been my husband
now since August 15, 1964, after four months of dating. It has been 50 years of
marriage as of this year, a
wonderful marriage to my best friend, companion, and care-giver.
When I was dating Tom for the four
months before we got married, he would come up
from Brooklyn on Saturday morning, and he and his family would stay at their
country home. He would come to pick me up, and we would spend the day together
and go to the movies at night. Sunday was church and afterwards a ride and then
they would go back to Brooklyn. During the week, Margie and I would go to the
post office to get our letters and then over to Watt’s drugstore for a Maybrook
special, a sundae for $.25, and then we would go back home.
It was a very long
week before I saw Tom again. One Saturday when
he came to get me, Mommy had the day off. She came over to the car, opened the
back door, and put Nancy in, saying, "Oh, I'm sure it's all right if she
goes."
What was Tom
supposed to say?
We talk often of the
Saturday night he came to pick me up for our first blind date. There we were: me, Mom, Grandma, Daddy, and Nancy. I wonder what
he was thinking.
I know it was a
big shock to many when we said we wanted to get married, but we were dead sure
this was what we wanted.
Finally, my mother and father said
okay, and we were married on August 15, 1964. Afterward, we moved to Brooklyn
to live in an apartment next door to his mom and dad. We had a five-room
apartment for $35 a month, but I was scared to death of the neighborhood, and
we moved back to Maybrook in February. Someday I would like to see again that
street and apartment where we started our married life.
Before I met Tom, his mom, his brother and he used to shop at Chaffee's. Doreen
worked there, but not I, and his mom was trying to fix Tom and Doreen up for a
date. It didn't happen, but she got another Blake girl for the family
anyway.
My dad liked Tom a
lot. I believe he thought he had finally gotten his boy, a son. Tom would help him do things around the house and take him
places. Dad used to collect scrap metal and take it to Newburgh for his “mad
money.”
Tom, Mom, and Dad
loved Grandma Blake. Tom’s dad used to listen to
stories she would tell. He really enjoyed them. He called her "Ma
Blake."
In February 2011,
after being sick with I-didn't-know-what, and having
gone to three different doctors, I had a lung biopsy and was told that I had
a terminal lung disease, pulmonary fibrosis, a death sentence within three to
five years. Dad said (I call my husband "Dad"), “Oh, hell no,
you are not going anywhere.”
I had been going to
this doctor for two and three-quarter years but switched to one closer; on
my first visit, she told me I didn't have pulmonary fibrosis, and that it
doesn't have to be a death sentence, anyway.
My husband has been
my support and cheerleader. Thank you, God, for this blind date!
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We are serializing Kathleen Blake Shields's upbeat book, Home is Where the Story Begins: Memoir of a Happy Childhood, available in paperback from its publisher, Outskirts Press, and from online booksellers such as amazon.com and bn.com. I am proud to have coached Kathy and edited for her.
My writing-coaching-editing site is http://WriteYourBookWithMe.com
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