Turning Sixty-five
There are certain movies I can watch over and over again … it drives my wife crazy. Most of the films aren’t great films, although I do hold the North American record for viewings of The Godfather. My favorites are usually romantic and each has a scene I love: Sally Albright faking an orgasm in a busy restaurant in When Harry Met Sally; Ronnie Camereri and Loretta Castorini at the opera in Moonstruck; Bill Johnson, the soda jerk, discovering color and art in Pleasantville; Phil Connors gradually learning to be human by living Groundhog Day again and again. In Billy Crystal’s City Slickers, as Mitch, Phil and Ed are driving the herd from New Mexico to Colorado, Mitch talks about his Best Day, a trip to Yankee Stadium with his father. My sixty-fifth birthday seems like the perfect occasion to look back at my Best Day.
The subject of Best Days recently came up over dinner with friends. I surprised my wife by saying that it was the day she and I got pinned. I’m fairly certain that getting pinned is a courtship ritual that has largely vanished, so I’d best explain it for any Younger Eyes that might pass this way. Back in the sixties, when I was in college, a fraternity man would give a girl his fraternity pin to signify his commitment to her. The commitment was more than going steady but not quite engagement.
I met my wife my junior year of college. She had recently broken up with my best friend because he wasn’t Jewish and only went out with me because she got my last name wrong (I was Catholic). I very quickly fell in love and she very quickly fell in like. I signed my notes Love and she signed hers As Always. Parents were less than fond of of the religious mismatch. We broke up. We got together again. My roommate told me I was digging my own grave. I was impetuous and rebellious enough to ignore my mother’s objections … she was cautious and responsible enough to try to conform to her parents wishes. It’s a combination that’s served us well through 41 years of marriage.
On a Spring day in 1966, we were stretched out on blankets at a fraternity picnic. There were hot dogs 
and burgers and kegs of beer and that staple of romantic occasions, watermelons spiked with vodka. The Four Tops sang Reach Out I’ll Be There on a stereo. We were 1960s fashionable, white jeans and sweaters, her sweater blue and mine rust. Sometime during the afternoon, I asked her if she’d take my pin, not really expecting she would. But she did. I can still feel the joy I felt at that moment and the way I floated through the evening. There have been many wonderful days since … our wedding, the adoption of our son and daughter, my daughter’s wedding, the birth of our grandchildren. But that day, when I knew in my heart we’d be together, was My Best Day.
Tags: City Slickers, feeling older, marriage, movies, soulmates
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May 21, 2009 at 6:23 am
You’ve got some of my all time favorite movies listed there. I never get tired of watching When Harry Met Sally.
I vaguely remember that scene from City Slickers. I think it was Daniel Stern who played the guy whose marriage fell apart. Everything about his character was designed to make the audience feel sorry for him. The Best Day scene seemed like the moment he returned to the land of the living.
Congratulations to you and your wife on so many years of happiness. It’s a rarity these days.