All these years later, in spite of the difficult times we had, I can still remember the details around meeting your dad like it was yesterday. It was 1952, and I had never been to a more lackluster party, hosted by a woman I worked with at Filene’s, whose name I can’t even recall; we really had nothing in common except that we were both about 20 and we both worked there, she in hosiery and me in cosmetics. She was nice enough, bubbly and self-centered in that way I sometimes find annoying, always checking herself in the mirror, always asking for an opinion about her hair or skirt or shoes. Still, it was somewhere to go on a night I otherwise would have been sitting at home with my father, and so I went. I probably only remember it at all because I met your father there, and whenever we had awkward moments of silence in the beginning of our relationship, we often turned the conversation back to the details of that night.

She lived in a tiny fourth-floor walk-up on Commonwealth, once the maid’s quarters for the larger space below, where her elderly aunt and uncle lived, and there were 12 of us squeezed into an array of uncomfortable chairs. It was uncomfortable enough, but then she had a whole list of games for us to play, things like passing a Life Saver from person to person on toothpicks we were supposed to hold between our teeth; then it was passing an orange under the chin. Obviously, the whole point of her silly games (she insisted the circle be boy, girl, boy, girl) was physical closeness. I don’t remember her name, and yet I can see the small round table in the corner of that room so clearly, where there was a cut glass punch bowl with her mix of ginger ale and pineapple juice, and little wedding cookies and a vase with a single red rose. The window shade was raised, and I could see the trees lining Commonwealth, below, my eyes fixed there as I nuzzled an orange under the chin of a cousin of hers who worked packing fish and, in fact, continued talking about fish and fishing the whole while that we were up close and personal with an orange between us.

“He was trying to hook you,” your father said later as we walked to catch our separate trains. By then, we were laughing about the awkwardness of the night, and before we knew it, we began talking about ourselves and our families.