LOVE AT FIRST STARE
When I first saw my husband, I couldn't believe my eyes. I had just landed in Athens with an economy class of undergraduates from Detroit, thinking I'd met everyone to whom I was going to be wedded for the four weeks of theatre making that lay ahead. We had heard a few professional actors from New York were meeting us in Greece, but I didn't expect much.
I looked up in the lobby of the Hotel Athena and stopped cold on the figure of a man, a grown-up kind of man, speaking to our program director (pictured here with his equally indefatigable wife, Mary). He was wearing, of all things in the stifling heat, a blazer, and he stuck out like a celebrity at a community theatre casting call. The tailored jacket showed off his figure and profile in a way that is burned in my memory. We didn't make them like that in my Wisconsin. And as if by the love potion that bewitched Titania, I was possessed from that moment on...by my real-life Mr. Darcy, handed to me in Greece.
This is a story that begins with beauty. An erös at first sight that grew into a deep philía as the layers were peeled away. In Bret's and my early years I learned that the objet of my obsession was also a smart man. Then I learned he was a good one. In the years since, years that include two children, we have learned that beauty, intelligence and character are tested with small losses and gains each day.
After six years of long-distance love and friendship I moved to New York. In the next six years we married and became parents. Today, twenty years from the month we met, we awake in Greece en famille, for an adventure that is part unabashed nostalgia, part a stake in the values we define for our future. We are certainly in search of something old, something new, something borrowed, and something very blue.
I always wanted a story. I think I got one. And I hope you'll join me for the ferry ride.
