One Week, Two Dates, and Forever Memories

Ever unlucky at love, I'm finding the spring of 2024 offering me a courtship script rigorously rewritten. Now if only I could sleep.

I badly want to convene a Blue Ribbon Commission on Great Dates, a jury of men and women all bearing rich life experience with courtship, stand before them, and prosecute my appeal that what I experienced in the third week of April 2024 with Kerry my Crush merits a monument of sorts among the single who are courting.

Or in my case, suddenly, the formerly single.

Today marks the one-week anniversary of my epic, life-altering second date with Kerry. And the first one was exhilarating, too. In the aggregate, it was a week I will never forget . . . and apparently recall and rapturously reminisce over in chunks of hours in the middle of each night. Nightly, without fail, thoughts Kerry rob me of hours of sleep. And this has been going on for months. And I f*cking love it.

In that miraculous marvel of an April week great food and wine nourished us. Crisp New England spring air caressed us. A hike up to a mountain summit inspired us. A state park playground swingset designed to amuse humans 40-plus years our junior thrilled us. Couples of notable duration together seated at bars near Kerry and me envied us. Riding shotgun in my Wrangler, Kerry with her mere proximity captivated me. Cameras captured our thrill and joy. 

If fun is finite my week with Kerry unfairly hogged most of the available fun in upper New England on our first two dates. It seemed intrinsically, organically exhilarating, most mutually experienced, carried off across settings stylish, embedded in Nature, and rough around the Maine edges (fun dive bars). 

Perhaps there is an explanation in our start.

Kerry is on the slender side of petite, with rapturously long, straight, blonde hair. And blue eyes. I’m beguiled by her. If you like blondes you really like Kerry, and if you don’t like blondes I think you would still like the looks of Kerry. Up until 8:00 Wednesday night, April 10, Kerry was, for me, one of the supervisors in the store in which we worked. Having a fierce and consuming crush on your boss is most inconvenient.

Kerry arrived at our store about eight months ago, in a somewhat common corporate HQ dictated swap of assistant managers. She made an immediate impression on me insomuch as my eye registered her being slender and fit and attractive. But there wasn’t much more for me to do with that; in our company all in management not only are strictly forbidden from romantic entanglements with subordinates, or their fellow manager peers, but forbidden also from socializing in even the most modest of ways, i.e., grabbing a beer together after work, for instance.

Occasionally work delivered Kerry and me interludes uninterrupted or distracted by staff peers or the shopping public, and in these moments I found the fuel of our ignition. Her substance powerfully supplemented her compelling physique and petite allure. Kerry was quick-witted and intelligent, warm, and fun loving. When I asked her point-blank if she’d ever shamelessly air guitar-ed in public, she matter-of-factly replied, “aggressively.” She allied poignantly and powerfully with me, too, with her preference for blueberries in her pancakes, and when she hastened to note that accompanying syrup “cannot be drizzled” onto the fluffy loveliness, as it’s too often too quickly absorbed and its flavor lost, and instead the individual bites must be dunked into syrup, she acquired something approaching soulmate standing.

Our pizza toppings preferences — and disdains — are identical.

I wanted to believe that there was in our workplace interludes authentic, organic, and mutual flirtation, but the limiting strictures of our shop’s rules with respect to fraternization — joined by the cynicism derivative of my romantic scar tissue — squashed that notion. Still, I seriously swooned on our shared shifts.

Then we had a fun snowstorm in lower Maine one Saturday in mid-March. Kerry and I were sharing a shift that Saturday. I was standing outside admiring the whitening landscape on a break when I noticed Kerry shoveling snow immediately in front of the store’s main entrance. I quickly packed a quality snowball, hurled it at her, and smacked her accurately in the thigh. She could see it coming, and when it landed she smiled and laughed. I filed that reaction away.

Incidentally, I launched that snowball from a solid 50-60 feet away. Sleepless from the sting of Cupid’s arrow, I began finding optimism where cynicism had long resided. Snowballs accurately aimed and delivered at beautiful blondes, I now believed, were a sign that God wanted Kerry in my Jeep. For dates.

So I took my crush and scored a replacement (and better) job. Isn’t that romantic!

On one of my final shifts in the store, by which time all in management knew of my departure, I was walking to the restroom when I heard Kerry call at me from behind. “You’re not allowed to leave,” she told me, smiling. 

“I’m going to miss hurling snowballs at you,” I replied. 

“I’m going to miss that, too,” she returned, smiling again. 

I don’t much remember feeling my feet on the store ground the remainder of that shift. It felt like the most romantic thing a woman had ever said to me. Ever.

On my final shift in the store I had one basic and beautiful and wildly nerve-wracking objective: secure Kerry’s phone number. I arrived for my shift well armed for the courtship battle: bearing a final slice of homemade blueberry pie, baked in the Maryland home of my parents, with whom I’d visited the previous weekend to share the news of my new job.

Kerry would soon learn of her earning a rare ranking with me. The universe of women on planet Earth to whom I’d voluntarily surrender a final slice of my mother’s blueberry pie was comprised of Kerry and original MTV VJ Martha Quinn. From Quinn’s Wikipedia page:

My cranium was going to detonate if I didn’t land Kerry’s phone number on my final night in the store.

At 5:15 in aisle 48 I informed Kerry of my need to get her contact info. But she was busy then. I handed her the slice of the world’s best blueberry pie at 6:15, timed to coincide with her dinner break. She’d return from her meal break for my final hour with our company.

That final hour shortened my life, as peer well wishers in infuriating volume ever obstructed me from my life’s most important mission.

Kerry stopped by my desk at 7:15 (because she knew I wanted her phone number, and liked me???); she stopped back again at 7:30 (because she knew I wanted her phone number, and liked me???); she stopped back a third time at 7:50 (because she knew I wanted her phone number, and liked me???). Fate seemed conspired against us.

Finally, mercifully, and in irrefutable evidence of the existence of a Divinity, I finally got 5 minutes alone with Kerry, in literally the final 10 minutes of my store career with her. She handed me her business card and wrote her cell phone number on it. I clocked out and levitated to my Jeep to start a new life . . . one with Kerry vaguely, peripherally, but encouragingly in it.

I took three Tylenol PM tablets and secured nearly 5 hours of sleep that night.

For date #1 I arrived at Kerry’s house bearing a dozen roses. That’s a sweet gesture by a suitor raised by a good father, but the real sweetness of our start was inside Kerry’s house, on an island in her kitchen. There she’d placed a gift bag for me, within which was a jar of blueberry preserves she’d discovered on a recent walk about a Maine farm. I instantly judged it the sweetest, most thoughtful gift any woman had ever given me. I’d moved to Maine, after all, partly to nourish my lifelong blueberry addiction.

I took Kerry that night to one of Portland’s finest restaurants, and one of the finest in all of New England, Fore Street, for dinner. I loved being the guy who took her for her first experience there. We ordered the same salad and the same entree, and the sommelier guided us to an extraordinary wine that Kerry judged the best she’d ever had. Fore Street offers a wonderfully romantic ambiance, and I told Kerry that I wanted to take her there so that other men of Maine, many in their own romantic pursuits that evening, could see me having dinner with her.

On date #2 Kerry took me on a hike up Bradbury Mountain in a Maine state park. We had a brilliant day of weather for it. On the mountaintop we sat down on a large rock landing that offered a breathtaking view of a sprawling panorama. It’s a favorite spot for devoted bird watchers, as the mountain is home to dozens of bird species.

On our descent from the mountain Kerry guided me to a picnic area and playground with a swingset within it. “You know you want to go to the playground with me,” she quipped. Of course she was right; I’d have followed her to a picnic at a landfill site in flames.

So onto the swings we went. This is when I knew things were going off the rails on our date, in the best possible way. Two 50-somethings, on swings, for like 10 minutes, swinging away spiritedly and talking, effortlessly, just as warmly as when we were atop the mountain. It was a patently absurd visual; I hadn’t been on a swingset in about 45 years. But with Kerry, I’m learning, anything and everything is fun.

We were still on the swingset when Kerry alerted me to our failure to take any photos atop the mountain. So back up we hiked for pics. And what a fortuitous decision that was. I shared a few of the pictures with family and close friends the next day, and their verdict was unanimous: they told me I looked the happiest I ever have. Because I was.

An hour later we were seated at a fun pizza joint, tipping back beers in early afternoon while much of Maine was still at work. After pizza we sat at the bar, for a day-cap, and while there we were joined by a warm and fun couple who’d been married 32 years. They were celebrating the wife’s 60th birthday. They were curious about Kerry and me, and when they asked about our background, I spiritedly informed of our being on our second date, that I’d changed jobs to make it happen, and, aided a bit by the beer, I added that I felt that my chances were good at earning a third. Kerry smiled and nodded her affirmation.

Somewhere in a text messaging frenzy Kerry and I discovered a mutual admiration for dive bars, so we cleared our pizza joint tab and headed to one she liked a lot near her home. Again we were seated at a bar near a couple of long commitment, and again we found ourselves explaining ourselves. I guess we were conspicuous in our date’s display of connectedness and mirth. We were in a cocoon of fun. I remember looking down at my watch and suddenly realizing that Kerry and I had now passed 9 hours on our date. Nine hours that felt like three.

Kerry wanted to finish our day together at a newly opened for the new season ice cream stand. As we stood in line for our sweet treats the dwindling sun was fading fast on a day I didn’t want to end. I felt like the luckiest man in Maine. Because I was.

A really good outcome at the conclusion of the greatest date in the history of dating: Jeep kissing.

I have what I think is a strong closing argument to put before the Blue Ribbon Commission on Great Dates, and it’s a post mortem from last Thursday that actually took place on Tuesday of this week. Kerry and I are meeting at her house tonight for movie night and date #3. (I will be bringing fresh flowers.) But the other night on the phone we shared an excitement for seeing one another that we couldn’t quite delay all the way til Thursday. So Tuesday I hopped in my Jeep on a day off from the new job, drove to a market, purchased Kerry a peach milkshake there, and delivered it to her in my Jeep in the parking lot of our old store. In between milkshake straw sips she kissed me.