May 27

May 27 is the 39th anniversary of CB and my first "real" date. This is the date we always observe, even though we dated three times in the fall of our freshman year in college. We found each other uninteresting that first dating period.

What brought us together is a poem I left on the windshield of his car. That same evening he called me up and invited me to sit with him in the "music room" at the college. After that, we dated often and even studied together. And 2 1/2 years later we were married.

At the time, this was my favorite poem. Here it is:

People

No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.

To each his world is private,
and in that world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute.
These are private.

In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.

There are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.

But what has gone is also not nothing:
by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.

     -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko