I’ve mentioned my wife, Ann, several times in this column over the years, and thought it was about time I flesh out this larger-than-life personality, who, without coercion, hypnosis or stimulants of any kind, consented to marry me on Oct. 11, 2015.
To my astonishment and great fortune.
We met at Green River Community College in the early 1980s during a class on William Shakespeare.I’d looked up when the bell rang, and saw a pretty girl with brown-blonde hair sitting next to me. The day’s reading was “The Taming of the Shrew.”
The first words she ever said to me came from a famous passage of wits between Katherine (the shrew) and Petruchio that we read that day, Act III (207-214). I have bolded those words.
Petruchio: “Come, come, you wasp, i’faith you are too angry.”
Katherine: “If I be waspish, best beware my sting.”
Petruchio: “My remedy is then to pluck it out.”
Katherine: “Ay, if the fool could find where it lies.”
I was startled to find her looking at me, an unnerving grin on her face. Who was this?
I’d soon find out. At the time, I was co-leader of a Christian group, Green River Active Christian Encounter (GRACE), which met every day at noon in one of the small — if I remember correctly — 8-sided, wood-and-glass meeting rooms the college once provided. Apparently, Ann made inquiries and when she learned I was a Christian, and co-leader of that group, she became a regular at these get-togethers.
And we became friends over our shared faith. She teased me, found it difficult to resist. Hell, she never even tried. I was a shy introvert and quite uncertain of myself at the time, she was every inch the extrovert she remains today. Seems the temptation to needle me constantly proved too strong.
“You looked like two scared eyeballs on a stalk,” she informed me later. I had no idea.
In the fall of 1983, I was off to study classical languages at the University of Washington, and Ann headed to Western Washington University to finish her degree in outdoor recreation. She wanted to be a ranger in a national park. I wanted to be a professor of classics. Neither of us realized those aims.
Nearly 25 years later, I called her home in Sumner, curious how life had worked out for her, and on a whim left a message. Hours later, she returned the call. She remembered word for word some of the goofy things I’d said years earlier, starting off with a weird, nonsensical sound I’d aped from my late brother: “Nuhhhh!”
That she’d remembered such a small detail I soon learned was absolutely characteristic of her, but only when it came to me. I do not exaggerate when I tell you she had not forgotten and has not since forgotten a single thing I’ve ever said. Others’ words she may forget, but not mine. Like metal fragments to a magnet. Flattering and alarming at the same time, especially when she summons the dumb things I’ve said from their graves where they should lie in repose forever .
Anyway, we met for coffee and were off on our adventure. Graybeards would call it “courtship.” Seven years it took to ask her to marry me, and, as you may imagine, she was getting impatient. So, when I popped the question, she said yes. Well, actually what she said as we sat in her truck on Sumner’s Main Street was: “For real?!”
“Yep,” I said. “For real.”
Best decision I’ve made, for more reasons than I can count in this column. But here are a few of them.
There is no better way if you are committed to your partner through good and bad times, and vice versa, to learn who and what you are, and to strip away the illusions that we maintain about ourselves. Good and bad things. Think you’re all sweetness and light? Guess again. Think you are the most reasonable of the Good Lord’s creatures? Guess again. I found out I had a bad temper, because some of the things she said would set me off on a spasm of stupidity.
Ann stood by me when I was awful to her during my long stay in the hospital post-cancer surgery. I had no idea how bad I was to her, but all who visited me assured me I’d been the very devil. Really? I’d yelled at her? That was a stunning revelation to me. So much of what I learned in that time about myself I have poured into this column. It was my dark night of the soul, and she stuck by me.
Ann is my wife, my sweetheart, my teacher, the staff on which I lean in this life.
My debt to her I suspect is the same many a man owes the woman in his life. I think Bob Dylan expressed it best:
“I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form,
‘Come in,’ she said, ‘I’ll give ya shelter from the storm.’”
Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@auburn-reporter.com.
