Here’s to thirty years

Ten years ago, I wrote a much shorter version of this story in a column for the Star-Herald. I was limited to 800 words. Today, on our 30th wedding anniversary, I’ve written a much more detailed version.

*****

Saturday, May 18, 1996 wasn’t quite random. It was a day of significance. A day to change all future days.

The temperature never reached 60°F (16°C), hovering around 55°F (13°C) most of the day. The air was cool. Traffic along Route 211 in Middletown, New York, was brisk that morning. I tried to keep my road rage in check, but there is always some “damned fool who can’t drive,” as my grandma used to say. I weaved in and out of traffic to ensure we made it to our appointment on time.

We had borrowed Gram’s black Ford minivan for a few hours so we didn’t have to walk the three miles to our destination. She assumed we had some errands to run. Technically, we did. It was just a slightly different errand than most people run late for on a Saturday morning.

I wore black Dockers paired with a long-sleeved, green, silk shirt. The shirt was tucked in with just a little bit pulled out and hanging over the belt loops, as was the fashion. The cuffs hung slightly past my wrists. Being short, few long-sleeved shirts have ever fit me. They were the nicest clothes I owned.

We went into the Town of Wallkill courthouse and waited our turn to see Judge Robert Freehill. As we waited, I thought of the events that led up to this day. Paul had arrived in America on Wednesday, December 27, 1995, at Newark International Airport. He couldn’t afford the train, so he had spent nearly a day traveling on a bus from his hometown in Preston, Lancashire, England to Gatwick Airport in London. He arrived sleep-deprived with just two duffel bags. He stayed in America for three months.

He flew back home in February 1996. My Aunt Julie and I were booked on a separate flight and landed at Heathrow. Paul should have been there waiting for us. His flight to Gatwick landed a couple of hours before ours. He was going to take the shuttle that transported you between airports and would be there waiting for us when we arrived. Unfortunately, London had a dusting of snow. Literally. You could walk outside and blow the snow off the roads with your breath, but Londoners didn’t know what to do. Paul was stuck on the shuttle somewhere between the two airports.

We waited for a while before I went to one of the courtesy phones, explained the situation and asked if they could page Paul on the off chance he was already in the airport. We promised to stay at our location and they would page him four times in an hour. If he still wasn’t there, the lady on the other end of the phone said we could call back.

After the third page, Paul found us and we headed into London to visit and stay with our friend, Jason. Julie and I had a short, mini-vacation throughout the United Kingdom before heading back to Preston to meet up with Paul again and gather his belongings. Paul and I had arranged to have most of his belongings shipped to America via a packing company. We returned to the United States on March 1.

As his second, three-month tourist visa was coming to an end, we had to decide what we were going to do. We had now known each other for three years, having met on ISCA BBS, during the early years of the internet. We talked for hours every day, even when I had been dating someone else. After I broke up with that guy, Paul slowly revealed he had feelings for me. The unfortunate part was this revelation came at a time when he was losing internet access and I was moving from Lincoln, Nebraska, back home to Middletown. There was no guarantee I would have internet access at home.

We decided to write each other letters. We wrote to each other between June 1995 and his arrival in December. There was always at least one letter a week, sometimes more, making it slightly confusing when one or the other got crossed in the mail and you had to figure out which letter was being responded to the one you wrote when you no longer had the original.

Paul always wrote on unlined, blue, stationery paper with a fountain pen and black ink. The letters were thick and dark in contrast to the blue paper. He pressed hard and, if you looked carefully, you could see the indentations on the pages underneath. He always said he used “joined up” writing. It was cursive, but, at times, looked like print. It was always neat and straight.

I wrote in black ink with all capital letters. It was much more boring than the stuffed blue envelopes held together with tape that I always received. Thanks to idiots on the internet, I’ve changed the way I write, even though I was writing in all caps by 1982. It’s considered screaming now and only unhinged people do that today.

Though the romantic feelings were already there, I had hesitated to reveal too much. My heart was already broken by a Dutch guy who took advantage of my thoughts and feelings. He was good at manipulation and I was thankful that I eventually saw through that.

Paul, on the other hand, was open and honest, writing earnestly in his letters about his life, including the mundane. He never tried to be anyone but himself. We talked in our letters about our struggles in life and our hopes for the future. His honesty and sincerity bled all over his letters. He was sensitive and kind. On those blue pages stained with black ink he expressed his vulnerabilities, desires, and dreams. I was as honest as I could be at that point in time, but didn’t want to make any definitive decisions until he was in front of me.

There was something in the back of my mind that said he might be the one. I tried to mentally swat it away so as to avoid another heartbreak, but each letter brought another kind of reassurance that this relationship was going to turn out fine.

It was already late in the day when his plane landed, but we had to wait for our friend Pete to arrive as well. My friend, Misty, had traveled to New York to see me. She met Pete, who was living in Manchester, England at the time, after I introduced her to the time-wasting fun of the internet. Pete and Paul met a couple of times before coming to America. Pete was late, passing through customs much later than everyone else. He had a bit too much to drink on the plane and was forced to answer a few more questions than the other passengers.

Though we were tired, we traveled to Buffalo so we could cross the border into Canada and see Niagara Falls. The guys were exhausted, but we thought traveling another five hours in a car was a great idea.

After returning to Middletown, we headed into New York City by train for New Year’s Eve. It’s a spectacle everyone should see, or so we had always been told. We visited the usual tourist hot spots, but not always together. Pete and Misty had different interests than Paul and I and so we sometimes went our different ways and met up later.

On Dec. 31, we were to meet in Times Square. At 8 p.m., you couldn’t get near it. Paul and I walked for hours around Times Square trying to get closer. We were always two to three blocks out. We thought there would be a way in, but the streets were barricaded with wooden horses and blocked by police officers.

The sweet smell of marijuana was everywhere on the west side of Times Square. The air was filled with a thick haze of smoke and sweat. The east side reminded me of the morning after a frat party. The stench of stale, cheap beer burned my nose with every breath. Most of the people we passed were already three sheets to the wind.

On the pot side, Paul and walked hand-in-hand and attempted to get past barricades. We failed. On the booze side, he clenched my hand tight, pulling me tight. There was a different, tenser feel on the east side. We thought we would try the west side again. It felt more welcoming. It didn’t matter who we talked to or how much we tried. We couldn’t get through.

We eventually gave up, thinking the hype was bullshit and a waste of our time. It was cold. We were frustrated. Everyone was wasted in one way or another. We couldn’t get near our meeting place. We hoped Misty and Pete had managed to get closer.

Paul and I slogged through the chilly night, passed the stench of piss in the subway, and back to our hotel. At $75 a night it was cheap for New York City. Their business cards boasted, “Transients welcome.” It was close to the Empire State building. Disappointed, but not surprised by the turn of events, we just wanted to be warm again.

We walked back into the room about 10 minutes to midnight. Pete and Misty were sitting on the edge of their bed watching television.

“We couldn’t get close,” Pete said.

“Neither could we,” Paul said.

We all sat together on the edge of our full-sized beds, our knees occasionally bumped each other in our tiny hotel room and watched the ball drop in Times Square, signaling the start of 1996, on a nine-inch, black and white television about two feet away from our eyes.

After Pete returned to England and Misty to Nebraska, it was just Paul and I. He said he knew from the moment he stepped off the plane, he never wanted to go return to the United Kingdom.

As May 31, the last day Paul could legally be in the United States, was fast approaching, a decision had to be made.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“I want to stay,” Paul said.

“Well, I only know one way to make that happen,” I said, staring off into the distance. “It has to be before the thirty-first.”

“How about the eighteenth?”

“Okay,” I said, pausing temporarily. “Why the eighteenth?”

“Because that’s the first time I told you I loved you.”

“Okay then.”

And I felt like shit for not knowing this date. Now, after being married 30 years and having known him for 33, this is not surprising. Paul has an amazing gift to remember facts and figures and how they relate to history and the world. He remembers births, deaths, anniversaries, how many kids you have, what their names are, who your family members are. You have to tell me at least 16 times and, maybe, just maybe, I will remember.

We made a trip to the clerk’s office with our birth certificates and other necessary paperwork to fill out a marriage application. When we turned in our paperwork to the clerk, she asked me, “Are you going to keep your name or…”

I cut her off. I wasn’t going to keep Burlingame, a name I spelled a million times and people still got it wrong, when North was so much easier. It’s a direction. You should have learned to spell it by the time you were nine years old. It was a good decision. I have yet to be asked how to spell North.

Because May 18 was on a Saturday, we weren’t sure we could get that date. I guess if you pay, you can pick any day you want.

We sat on the hard, wooden benches outside the courtroom waiting for Judge Freehill to finish with the couple before us. We walked into the empty courtroom. Judge Freehill went through some formalities before he began. He asked us if we had any witnesses. Witnesses? I panicked. Now we weren’t going to get married. Paul was going to have to return to England and it would be at least a year before he could come back.

“No, sir. We don’t,” Paul said, sighing. We looked at each other dumbfounded. We never even thought of witnesses.

The quick-thinking judge asked us to hold on a moment. He opened the door to the courtroom and knocked on the door to a room left of the courtroom. Upon opening it, there were several Town of Wallkill police officers eating lunch.

“Would any of you like to be a witness to a marriage?” he asked.

I thought to myself, “Why the hell would a stranger witness another stranger’s wedding?” This wasn’t going to happen. I panicked some more. But, less than a second after the judge asked, and a micro-second after I panicked, an officer said yes.

We never did get that cop’s name, but he did a good deed that day, even if it interrupted his lunch. Paul and I shook Judge Freehill’s hand, thanked him, and tipped him $20 for his service. We had no idea if this was enough or appropriate, but he took the bill and we left.

Being poor, the best lunch we could afford that day was McDonald’s. We drove back down Route 211 East and pulled into the much-too-small parking lot. Paul ordered the Big Mac Meal. I ordered the two cheeseburgers meal. Only ketchup, of course.

And every year, for the past 30 years, on May 18, we go to McDonald’s for lunch.

When people learn Paul is now a U.S. citizen and they always ask him why he came to America. “I came for her,” he always replies. He says he knew from the moment he stepped off the plane that I was the one. He came for me and never looked back.