It’s 5:30 a.m. and no one in the neighborhood is out but me—the early-to-bed, early-to-rise girl who loves the treasures really early mornings afford.
Today I found them in the foot or so of snow that covered our steps and walks. With shovel in hand and a plan, I set to work. Dig, slide, lift, toss; dig, slide, lift, toss . . . The mindless chore cleared my head. Enter, Gordon Lightfoot.
If I could only have you near to breathe a sigh or two. I would be happy just to hold the hands I love upon this winter night with you . . .
Gordon’s smoky voice ushers in a memory of me sitting next to my love one Friday night in a big dark room filled with students I hadn’t seen before and probably wouldn’t see again. Sackett Hall. Oregon State University. We watched “The Odd Couple” projected on a wall—a ho-hum free movie and distant second to our first choice date that wouldn’t happen: a Gordon Lightfoot concert. I’ve always regretted not going to that concert.
But—and I know my children will find this unbelievable—the $15 tickets were too much for our meager “poor as church mice” budgets, or more accurately “poor as graduate students.” Anyway, we acted responsibly and tolerated Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon for a date night.
But the treasure of sitting next to my love did not escape me then and—40 years later—it does not escape me now.
He drove down from seminary in Portland on Fridays, and we’d do laundry together in the basement of Sackett Hall—25 cents a load to wash, 10 cents to dry.
I anxiously awaited his arrival on Friday nights; I loved our catch up conversations and dinner together in the dining hall across the way.
He once told me a joke as we made our way to dinner, and I laughed. I can’t recall the joke now, but we ate dinner as usual, talked as usual, left the dining hall as usual and made our way back to Sackett as usual. As we passed through the double glass doors and walked the short distance toward my room, he told me another joke. The punchline referred back to the earlier joke. He delivered it just as we reached the step that led to my door.
The surprise connection of the two jokes made me burst out in laughter. Who saw that coming? The thought of his disciplined restraint throughout dinner made me laugh more.
I laughed so hard and so uncontrollably that I dropped to the oak step and tears flowed down my face. I sat and laughed, and he laughed at me laughing. People passed by and grinned while we just laughed and laughed.
And this is the treasure: the mere thought of laughing on Friday nights with my love.
Dig, slide, lift, toss; dig, slide, lift, toss.
Morris Sampler 