We are sitting around the dining room table in my home. My husband and I lie on the edge of forty and our children are old enough to wait for the 7:30 pm dinner with my visiting parents. Over homemade fettucine and warm focaccia our conversation drifts from a recount of my parent’s trip to Italy to the details of their Thanksgiving visit with my sister’s family in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Now I cannot recollect how it came about, but with a sleight of words the conversation twisted to bring 45 years past into the present. “How could this be,” I marvel to myself, “We were here talking about current events and presto they’re talking about the old stuff.”
My mother is remembering the year 1949 when she left Stephens College in Missouri for the co-ed world of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I don’t understand all the mysteries of it, but I have heard this magical story many times before. I rest my chin on my left hand that is propped up by my unseemly elbow on the dinner table. Beneath half-lowered eyelids I glare at my mother expecting the usual story about how she walked into her Education 101 class and there was Mr. Handsome, star athlete, instant love of her life, my father. She was Phi Beta Kappa and he was Kappa Beta Phi. She was Methodist, he was Catholic. Oil and water, but mystic love magnetized them. He left the Catholic Church for her. They married in her home town at the altar of the Methodist church and, voila’, here we are at dinner. I can recount the oft turned tale by heart.
Just as I become mesmerized by her voice I realize that the story is off track. She is talking about meeting my dad, but she is not at the door of the Education 101 classroom. She is with a group of Tri Deltas near a dark hedge row at the back of the SAE house. The girls are standing in a circle chatting when a young man comes flying out of the rear entry of the fraternity house. Perched on my dinner chair I’m totally confused about this alteration in historical fact. “What were you doing at the SAE house?” I inquire, eyes now wide open.
“We were at a party, of course,” My mother expounds. “I had just gotten to Carolina that fall and I had joined the Tri Delta sorority and first we went to a party at the Phi Delt house and then we ended up at the SAE party,” She says, offering me a little smile and tilt of the head like I should be recalling this on my own. “Anyway,” She continues, “We were standing behind the SAE house when this young man came flying out of the door and landed sprawling on the ground near us. We all looked at him and as he appeared to be unhurt we looked up to the doorway for the perpetrator of this levitation. We saw this fine fellow balanced in the doorway and one of the other girls whispered, ‘Oh, that’s Dick Wiess the football player. You know his picture is at the Carolina Theater.” Of course it was my first encounter with your father, only, I didn’t meet him at the time.”
“Do you mean,” I interrupt, “That daddy had hit this guy?”
“Well,” My dad answers for her, “I had to hit him because he said some things to me that were not very nice.” He stops there looking off into space perhaps recollecting the foul conversation that he cannot repeat in present company.
I am left in the dark with this out of the hat story my parents have revealed. “I’ve never heard of daddy hitting anyone or any of the rest of this story for that matter,” I insist. “What about the old version where there was ecstasy in Education 101?”
“Well,” My mother proceeds, “Later in the fall I explained to my advisor that I had come to Carolina specifically to meet cute boys. He suggested that I should take Education 101 where he said all the athletes would be. So, I went there that first day and, do you know, when I opened the door there were only four guys in the class. There was Dick and three of his football buddies, Joe Dudak, Goo Goo Gant and Buford.
“Did you recognize daddy as the punchin’ guy from the SAE house?” I ask.
“Sure,” My mother shrugs,” but Dick was even at first glance by far and away the cutest of the four.”
“Goo Goo was pretty cute,” My dad snickers, “Except for missing both his front teeth.”
“So, ther you go,” My mother concludes. “I sat behind him that day. His grades subsequently were much improved with my assistance and we fell in love.”
I gaze at my mother who in turn is peacefully eating her dinner, her magical tale complete. I on the other hand do not feel peaceful at all. I am still trying to adjust to this new understanding of life and am mildly resentful of this turn of events. “Well,” I finally growl at my mother, “While, I find this story consistent with reality, I am not yet able to follow all the intricacies perfectly well. For years I have accepted that illusion of you opening the Education 101 door to see the love of your life among the eligible crowd. Now, quite by happenstance, I find that reality floats on fisticuffs and a full set of teeth. In the future, I beg you please, just continue to fancy me with smoke and mirrors. I love the magic.”