What were the odds? We were walking along, probably both thinking that we might never see each other again, and then I said something—I can’t tell you what, but it led to me telling about my mother and her untimely death, and then he told about his father, and it was like we couldn’t say or hear enough. We ended up going to get a cup of coffee and sat for over an hour, heavy white mugs in our hands, and he wrote my phone number on the inside of the matchbook on the table.

Needless to say, I didn’t know at the time that he collected them and that as a young man, your father kept a lot of important phone numbers and information inside those little matchbooks. In fact, he still has a little book from the Lorraine Hotel, where he and his grandmother stayed when he first came to North Carolina as a boy. If you ever find it there on his dresser top, you will know those old dull matches have traveled many miles with him. And speaking of old dull matches, that’s us.

It was December, and there were trees and lights everywhere. Your father was wearing a dark-green wool scarf that I later learned had once belonged to his father, and when his train approached, he hastily asked what I was doing the next day, and we made plans to meet there in that same place after work.

“It would take more than that to hook me,” I had said in a moment of great confidence. For a long time after, we joked about bait and lures; he wrote me a little note that said I was “so a-luring.” In fact, our very first Christmas tree was decorated with the lures and tackle we’d bought for each other in those earliest days. I still have them all (bits of silver and feathers like exotic jewelry), and I often think how you might one day find them and wonder, “What is this old rusty junk?” Some look a lot like the earrings Becca once wore during her poncho, Indian beads, and moccasin days. “So alluring.” You might have heard us say that.

September 1, 1964

I love the dance school. It’s slow going but a work in progress. We had fun thinking of a name: My Turn, or That’s the Pointe, or simply Lil’s School of Dance, which is what I ultimately went with, if for no other reason than it suits me (it’s not cute or witty, just straightforward). The squat cinder-block building was once a tire store but, with paint and new floors, has now been transformed into a sanctuary: barres, wall-length mirrors, a tiny dressing room with cubbies, a shelf filled with items ordered for these first students (lamb’s wool and leg warmers, Capezio shoes and Danskin tights). I love when I am there all alone.