A number with meaning today.
It was a Saturday then, today it is a Sunday.
It was late afternoon, September 21, 1974.
I was at the Bryn Mawr train station, heading into Philadelphia for a friend's party.
I knew her slightly, she walked past me without acknowledging me so I called after her.
She came back and we chatted. She was coming from visiting her sister at prep school heading home - into Philadelphia on one line, out on another. But our train was late so she missed her connection. Since I was early for the party and she had almost an hour to wait I invited her for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.
And so began our remarkable journey together, one that exceed well over half my life and more than 2/3 of hers.
40 years.
There was a period of time when our relationship was long distance - after that first year, when she took time off between high school and college to seriously study ballet, she spent four years at Harvard followed by three at Oxford, while I remained in the Philadelphia area. The time we had together was precious, not to be wasted in petty arguments.
But then we were again in the same city, and finally had to begin the hard work of adjusting to the reality of another person. That was the first rough patch, but surely not the last.
We finally got married on December 29, 1985, after more than 11 years together. She had only been 17 when we began the relationship, and had never been on a date. Me? I was 28 with more failed relationships than I care to remember or recount.
Yet somehow we were quickly drawn to one another, strongly enough that the relationship survived the not infrequent periods of difficulty between us.
There were periods in those early years where we each saw other people, briefly, without serious involvement, but just enough to realize that we knew the person with whom we wanted to be.
