It was a bitter cold March day in Meriden, New Hampshire, just the kind of bitter cold New Hamshire day we would learn to love endure in the many years ahead. Jim and I, age 12 22, sat in the headmaster’s office of Kimball Union Academy. Just prior to our interview with the headmaster we had survived a robust and lengthy tour of campus with winds roaring off the polar ice cap. This had been a particular pleasure for me as my winter coat got locked in the Athletic Director’s office before the tour. Not that it was a warm enough coat anyways, because Connecticut winter coats really don’t cut it in New Hampshire winters. As I sat perched on the seat listening attentively to the headmaster’s oration, my chattering was only half nerves.
The headmaster was a charismatic but entirely humorless man often spotted running the track with his tie on. Even in this first encounter, the intimidation factor was through the roof. Jim and I were college seniors, planning to marry on September 1st. Headmaster Mikula had just offered us jobs to teach Math ( Jim ) and English (me) and do four hundred other jobs related to life in a private school (like coach field hockey even though I had never played the game).
One would have thought we would be of good cheer (because it was our first and only job offer), but mostly we were feeling confused. The headmaster had prefaced his job offer by giving us a scathing review of our lives so far, wrapping up with the words, “You smile too much. The students are going to eat you alive.”
It was clear he did not want to hire us, but needs must. There was but one available apartment and the headmaster wanted all teachers to live on campus. The school needed an English teacher and a Math teacher so we fit the bill for the vacant apartment/teaching positions, but the real clincher was that the school needed a swim coach. Jim had swum competitively for twelve years, and there was not much he didn’t know about swimming. I was to be his side kick at the pool as I had swum in college for a year.
As we rose to go, the headmaster had one more demand. “You need to change your wedding date. I am not putting a couple who have been married 24 hours in charge of a dorm of 48 teenage boys.” Negotiations were short. We agreed on an August 11th wedding date, because after all, three weeks of married life would make all the difference.
We went back to our respective campuses to graduate then returned to our Connecticut hometown where we had met in fifth grade. Though we had done no planning, we managed to pull off a wedding on August 11th. It was a long summer and a motley affair. The preceding weeks, Jim ran the second shift at an ice cream factory, rolling home most night as 2 or 3 in the morning. I was teaching arts and crafts at a local summer camp. The only time we were both awake and available was lunchtime when Jim would come to the camp to talk wedding details. My mother wanted an Emily Post type affair which mostly seemed to involve her giving a lot of deranged directives to us, and Jim and I head scratching to implement these executive orders. There were many unpleasant conversations at our lunches. “My mother says your mother can’t ….” That sort of thing. Most memorably, a bunch of 11 year old campers delighted in throwing balls at us during lunch, yelling, “Do it on the lawn.”
Jim would probably definitely mention that the second topic of conversation at these grim lunches was about Skylab, a big satellite due to fall to earth moments before our nuptials. It was impossible hard work for him to convince me that in all probability Skylab was not going to fall on me and crush our wedding dreams. It is a wonder he showed up at the church
The best thing about the wedding for me was leaving with Jim. I also loved wearing my great great grandmother’s wedding dress from 1854. We arrived on campus the day after we got married. We had no money so needed to go right to our dorm apartment. Little did we know that miraculously we would survive triumph through a decade at Kimball Union and 46 years in the tiny town of Meriden (and counting).
Today, being the anniversary of the headmaster’s choice for our wedding day, Jim and I found ourselves trying to recall if we sat in his office with any vision for what was to come. We agreed we had no idea of the grand adventure that lay ahead of a magical farm, Flowers and more Flowers, precious children and grandchildren, beloved animals, Angels, Elementals, a wonderful Green Hope Farm community of you all and of course groundhogs. So thank you Divinity for this marvelous adventure and thank you Headmaster Mikula for picking a great day for us and for giving us a chance to come to this tiny town and meet our destiny.
