Posted on the side of my file cabinet next to my desk are three photographs. The first is a black and white snapshot of Susie, taken in May 1952 at Connecticut College for Women [as it was then called]. She is seated on a lawn, wearing a short-sleeved v-neck blouse and and a dirndl skirt flared out around her, her hair in the page boy that she had affected since I first fell in love with her in high school in 1948. The second is our wedding photograph, taken at the Northampton City Hall after our marriage on August 25, 1987. We are in dress-up street clothes because it was the City Clerk who married us. The third is the small head shot she just had taken so that we could renew her passport before going back to Paris in October.
Those three photos are a visual expression of the unity of my life. It is an extraordinary experience to be seventy-nine and have so strong a living connection through Susie with my boyhood. Many people these days have second or third marriages -- new beginnings, they think of them. But for Susie and me, marriage was a coming home.
This is really lovely.
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