We met in the late spring, 1956, the year I graduated from State. It seems so long ago now—it’s hard to imagine we were ever anything but the old men we’ve become. My youngest sister Betty had a boy she wanted me to meet, someone I thought she was courting at the time, and she arranged an afternoon date. I thought she wanted my approval before she married the guy; that’s the way things were done back in the day.
But when I drove up to Jim’s parent’s house and saw those long legs unfold as he pushed himself up off the front steps of the porch, I thought I’d spend the rest of my life aching for him. I could just imagine the jealousy that would eat me alive, knowing my sister slept in those gangly arms every night; family gatherings would become unbearable as I watched the two of them kiss a
