Watch Out For Double Blind Dates

It was my sixteenth birthday. I was finally allowed to date. Problem was I had no one to go on a date with. It was summertime so there was no school. The only boys in the neighborhood were younger than me and even the boys in our group that went to dances every weekend were younger than me. Finally school started in September and I looked forward to one of the boys asking me to a school dance but it never happened. Halloween came and went without a date. Four months wasted because I was not asked on a date. At least my girlfriend, Ann, and I could talk about someday having a date. She lived just three doors down the street from me. When I say down the street that is not just an expression. I lived at the top of the hill and she lived at the bottom.

I had just spent a few hours with Ann early in November and left to go home for dinner. I climbed the three steps to the wooden front porch and was reaching for the door knob to open the door when Ann almost pushed me through our front door. She had run all the way up the hill so she breathlessly asked me if I wanted to go on a date that night. A friend of her mother’s (now my sister-in-law) told her mother that the friend’s brother and brother-in-law had their dates cancelled for that night because one of the girls was sick. The brother-in-law had the car for the first time and they were looking for replacement dates. I told her we would have to ask my parents first because they had never let me car date before. I really thought they would say no, so you can imagine my shock when they said yes. The only stipulations were we had to be home by 11 and no drive-in movie. They also warned me about double blind dates because that was how they met.

We got my Year Book from the previous year out but found no picture of the boy who went to our school. The other boy went to another high school so we couldn’t check out his picture either. My girlfriend, decided she wanted “new territory” so she would be the boy from the other high school’s date and I would date the boy from our high school. It was the best coin toss of two centuries for me.

I primped and preened the rest of the afternoon while nervously awaiting the time for my date. I must have tried on at least ten outfits before time was too short to try another. With a final brush of my hair and check in the mirror for the little make-up I wore, I went downstairs to wait for the doorbell. When it rang I almost called my mom to answer it because I was so nervous. I had no idea what my date looked like or anything about him except he was going to drive us on the date because he had the car for the first time.

When I opened the door I stared into the bluest eyes I had ever seen and it was like a bolt of electricity went through me clear to my toes. My girlfriend introduced the boys as Rob and Hank then we went to the kitchen and introduced them to my parents. Mom and Dad repeated the time I was to be home and no drive-in. I agreed then we left. 

That is when I found out we were going to a drive-in. That was not the only restriction we broke that night but they had not said anything about making out. We drove to the drive-in and Rob and I shyly watched the first show about James Dean’s life. Ann and Hank were busy making out in the back seat but Rob and I had not even gotten to the point of sitting close. Ann and Hank kept urging us to get closer but we were too shy. Finally Ann pushed me and Hank pushed Rob until we were as close as we could get to each other. Rob then put his arm around me for the first time. But far from the last

My heart was beating so hard I thought it was going to jump out of my chest. We snuggled for a while then he turned me to him and gave me my first real kiss. From that moment on I was oblivious to everything but Rob. We did a lot of cuddling and kissing during the second movie so neither one of us saw what was on the screen or anywhere else until the movie ended and we had to leave.

I thought we were going straight home but the other three suggested we stop for a coke and a snack. We went to the nearest hamburger joint to enjoy our snacks and drinks. Time did not exist until I looked at my watch. I was supposed to be home by now! We all rushed to get me home on time but I was a half hour late. Rob asked me out for the next Saturday and I could say nothing else but, ”Yes.” We exchanged phone numbers and he gave me one more kiss on the porch before leaving. I expected to be grounded for at least two weeks but all my parents said was, “How was your date?” 

Though we went to the same school, our schedules were completely different so we were on the phone almost every night instead. We discovered our homerooms were just across the lunchroom stairs from each other so we started meeting at school every chance we could. A few days later, Rob said his mother was in the hospital and we would have to cancel our date until she was home. I was disappointed and I think he was as well but we still could see each other at school so it wasn’t too bad. 

A month to the day after we met we went on our second date. This time to an indoor movie. I have no idea what was playing but I dodged every kiss Rob tried to give me. I was just in a teasing mood. When he took me home, he walked me to the door. Oh, I forgot to mention he was a gentleman and always opened doors for me as well as walking me to my door when we got home. We talked for a while and I still would not let him kiss me. Finally he said good night then grabbed me in his arms and planted the most glorious kiss that lasted forever. Well, the kiss didn’t really last forever exactly but we still shared them for many years. I didn’t walk in the house, I floated. I think mom and dad asked about the date when I said goodnight. I don’t know if they could see the stars in my eyes and heart or not but it soon became obvious Rob and I were a pair. Even at school they could see we were going steady though he had never asked me to. Neither one of us even wanted to date anyone else. It was just an understanding between us. Our bond was deep and it still was as long as he lived. 

We continued to see each other at school and talked on the phone each night for hours but did not have another date until Christmas Eve. Ann was singing in the choir at her church and asked us to come hear her. It was a traditional midnight service honoring Jesus birth and though we were not of her denomination, we agreed to go with Hank and her. We assembled at my house earlier in the evening to exchange gifts. The record player was playing in the background. This was before music was expected to be loud enough to burst the speakers so it was true background music. I don’t remember what I gave Rob but I remember his gifts to me. The first was a beautiful red blouse. He knew I loved red. The blouse is long gone now but I can still see it in my mind. The second has lasted a lifetime. He pulled me onto his lap and asked me if what I said on the phone last night was true. First I asked which thing. He answered, “The part about the house and white picket fence.” I said it was true. Then he rocked my world with, “Will you marry me?” I must have thought for about ten seconds before I answered, “Yes!” Jimmy Rodgers was singing “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine”. They really were, so that became our song.

Of course, Ann and Hank knew we were engaged since they were sitting beside us on the couch. We decided not to tell anyone else. We went to the car to go to church as planned. The only difference was he didn’t open the car door for me. Maybe it was his way of teasing me to get back t me for the way I had acted on our previous date. He did continue to open doors for me after that night and still did as long as he could. I don’t remember how well Ann sang or what the sermon was. We were in our own world. A world that started on a double blind date and still existed 62 years later. Later we shared that it had been the very first date for each of us. Neither of us had dated anyone else before our first date. Neither of us dated anyone else after our first date either.

Rob told his mom after he got home that night but everyone else thought we were just going steady. In the next few months I became acquainted with his parents and he with mine. We spent every minute we could together. There were a few formal dates and he came to my house often. We started skipping school in the afternoons and went straight to my house. He joined the Navy that spring and we were married less than eight months after he proposed. He was too young to get married in our state even with parents permission so we eloped with both sets of parents to our neighboring state that did allow us to get married. We were both seventeen when we said I do. That night there was a reception at my parents house since we had to cancel all our original plans. No one gave our marriage more than five years because everyone said we were too young. They were very wrong. We returned to my parents house twenty-five years later to celebrate our silver anniversary. Most of those who attended our wedding reception had died but there were still a few who were there twenty-five years later and accepted they had been wrong at the wedding reception.

We had some of the same ups and downs any marriage faces and a few that aren’t so widely faced. We celebrated our twentieth anniversary in Nassau, Bahamas. We traveled and saw a large part of our country. We rockhounded over twenty states and even into Mexico. We spent our forty-ninth anniversary at Niagara Falls and our fiftieth on a drill site gate guard job outside of Winnie, Texas with a great Cajun dinner he went into town and brought home. He learned to do lapidary and created some gorgeous gemstones. I learned to make beaded jewelry. We briefly had a small business selling our creations and finds at weekend jewelry shows until caring for parents was more important. 

In 1978 we joined Alcoholics Anonymous, In 2019 we saw our forty-first sobriety anniversary. We went to college together in our fifties and I received my associates degree. We both earned certificates in gemology, jewelry and horology. He used his horology skills first by servicing and repairing aircraft clocks then learning to do the same with all cockpit instrumentation. My education turned out to be wasted because I could earn over twice the pay being the secretary/bookkeeper/receptionist I had always been but I still made beaded jewelry for myself and proudly wear the pieces we had made in class

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Soon after 9-11 he showed the first symptoms of a disease but we didn’t know it. It was a disease we never heard of until he was officially diagnosed ten years later. We still knew nothing about it although I scoured the Internet trying to find information. His diagnosis was dementia then later refined to Lewy Body Disease. I stumbled along the first year and a half still without knowledge while he continually lost more ground. I finally found a support group where I began learning about the disease of dementia. 

Over sixty percent of adults do not know dementia is a disease. They just think it is senility or forgetfulness that goes with old age. Basically that is what I thought until I found the support group. Through the support group I was able to attend Caregiver courses where I learned exactly was dementia is. Most people have heard of Alzheimer’s but that is just one of over a hundred forms of dementia. Every form of dementia causes destruction of brain cells until the mind and body shut down ending in death. Dementia is a death sentence because there is currently nothing that will slow it down or stop it. There are medications to alleviate symptoms but they do nothing for the dementia. Deadly cancer is kinder to both the patient and the caregiver because it is quicker to give the final release. Dementia can begin as much as twenty years before most symptoms appear. It can take another twenty years before death. There is no other known disease that takes forty years to kill a person with no treatment or cure.

I did not know I saw symptoms ten years before diagnosis until I took the courses. I did not know my husband was given a death sentence when he was diagnosed but I learned that less than two years before he died. I watched him disappear brain cell by brain cell after that and recognized how many I had seen die before I really knew what his disease was. He gave me his love as long as he could. There were days he did not know who I was. Like the day he asked me if I was married in a tone that told me he hoped I wasn’t so he could ask me to marry him. As long as he was able, he said the most beautiful words he could say – “I love you.” I stayed by his side until the last and never stopped saying, “I love you” to him. He was seventy-nine when he had to leave me and our marriage that would not last had endured sixty-one years. We made an agreement several years before his death. The first to go would be cremated and their ashes would be kept until the survivor died. The family would then combine the ashes and throw them to the winds so that we may travel in death as we did in life and our marriage will last through eternity.