Love at First (and Second) Sight

When I was young, back before I had any business being interesting in

females, I fully realized I was intrigued by girls possessing dark hair

and big eyes. When visiting our Chicago cousins one Sunday we went for a

drive that included viewing the steel mills in the Calumet Harbor

industrial region. I recall being amazed by the sight of the monstrous

mills. Up to that point in my life I thought silos and barns were big. And

I was taken by an unusual church nearby; a church with onion-shaped

spires. As we drove past the church, northbound, we came to an

intersection and it was then a saw "her" - a little girl about my age, who

was standing on the street corner with her bicycle. Behind her was a

slate-gray house that was tall, thin and long. But she was, in my opinion,

beautiful - with her big, dark eyes - and I stared at her as we slowly

drove past. My sister made some smart-aleck comment so I punched her. It

is vividly clear in my memory to this day. For almost 20 years thereafter,

whenever I was in a location where I could smell the sulfur in the air

from heavy industry, I'd wonder who "she" was, where "she" was and what

"she" was doing.

Love at first sight did happen to me again when I saw a young lady in

college - dark hair and big eyes. We married in 1971. In 1975 her

grandmother died. We traveled down to a suburb south of Chicago for the

funeral and family get-together. I learned that the funeral service was to

take place in an Orthodox church close to the steel mills, the very same

church I had seen when riding in the area so many years prior. As we left

the church in the long procession of cars, we headed north to a through

street in order to turn left and find the Dan Ryan Expressway and the trip

south to the cemetery. It suddenly hit me that we were going to pass the

very same house where the gorgeous little girl was playing. I turned to my

wife and was just about to say, "Later on remind me to tell you about this

house."

Before my words came out she spoke as she pointed to the slate-gray home,

"See that house on the corner here, that's where we used to live in when I

was little."

I couldn't manage to get a word out for three blocks.

Ed Walker