Excerpt: From the Ashes of Courage

“I know what,” said Eddie. “Tell her about how you two met.”

“How we met?” Mr. Porter said. “We met in college like every, other couple in the 50’s. Nothing special about that.”

“Oh, you’re such a romantic,” his wife said, rolling her eyes again. “I was in my senior year--and back then, women went to college to find a husband, so I was running out of time. One day, I walked into the student union, wearing one of those pouffy, pleated skirts that all the girls used to wear back then. And some pervert--”

“That’s me,” Mr. Porter interjected.

“I feel someone’s hand up my skirt!”

“Oh my God!” Gail said. “You’re kidding!”

“No, I’m not kidding.”

“It was an accident!” Mr. Porter said.

“Sure it was.” His wife had that sarcastic tone in her voice again.

“Right. It was,” he repeated.

“Hey,” she shot back playfully, “you already had a chance to tell your version of the story. Now it’s my turn.”

He grinned at her lasciviously, leered, and Gail was almost afraid that they were going to start making out right there on the cottage lawn, a thought that was both romantic and disturbing at the same time.

“I twirled around ready to punch someone in the nose,” she continued. “You see, I grew up in a house full of brothers, and they used to do things like that to upset me, when I was little. And so I learned at a young age to defend myself. So I twirl around ready to fight. And you know what those pleated skirts do when you twirl in them.”

“Oh no!” said Gail.

“And so here I am with some guy’s hand up my skirt, and everyone in the room is getting an eye-full.” Her face turned red, as was Gail’s, but she continued on. “It all happened so fast. I hit him upside the head, as hard as I could, which fortunately wasn’t too hard, but I broke his glasses in the process. Meanwhile, he had been sitting at one of the tables there, and I guess he had been stretching or something--”

“I told you it was an accident,” he said.

“-- and I wasn’t watching where I was going, and I ended up running right into him. So there he is with his glasses on the floor, because I had knocked them off, and he can’t see without them, but he realizes something’s gone wrong. And I look, and his face has turned red as a beet. And everyone in the room is staring at us...”

“Good times,” he added.

Gail picked her jaw up off the ground. “So then what happened?”

“I asked her to marry me, is what happened,” he said.

“And you’ve been blissfully happy ever since,” Gail said, more a question than a statement, though everything she saw in how these people interacted showed that they knew who they were, where they had come from, where they were going, and that they were doing it together.

“Not always,” Mrs. Porter said, “but on balance, yes, we have. After we were married, I went to work as a secretary to help put Frank the rest of the way through college. That was unpopular back then, for a wife to work outside the house, especially when her husband wasn’t. It’s still unusual, but there’s not so much a prejudice about it now. But then after he graduated, he got a job on the executive track, and I quit my job, and we moved to the suburbs and started a family.”

“That’s when our problems really started,” he joked.

But she nodded, in all seriousness, “Yes. When you’re young, you think having kids is going to be the most wonderful thing in the world, especially back in the 1950’s, when everyone was having a huge family. But in reality, it makes everything more complicated.”

“And because of my job,” he said, “I wasn’t always, I worked long hours; she had to take care of, the kids herself.”

“We had some hard times,” she agreed. “And then there was that time we thought you were going to be laid off.”

He nodded. “Yep. That was in, years later, in 66, I think. Almost didn’t make it.” He seemed proud, maybe, Gail thought, because he could include the word almost.

Eddie had been sitting quietly, nodding at appropriate times, laughing at the appropriate times, but otherwise attentively listening. He loved hearing the Porters tell their stories, and he could listen to them over and over again. He also could tell that they enjoyed the audience, and he tried to play the part of a good audience.

Eddie now spoke. “You guys should go on the conference circuit. These stories deserve a wider audience.”

“You’re full of it,” said Mr. Porter.

Eddie grinned. “Seriously, though, you tell your stories so well, and there are lessons in them that the younger generations need to hear.”

Gail nodded, spontaneously. “I might get married again, if I could be guaranteed to be as happy as you two are.” And she immediately regretted mentioning that she had been married at all. But she really did admire the relationship they had, so different from each other, yet so comfortable with each other, and so close. It was the kind of true love she had fantasized about when she was little.