Sixty Shades of Love
A Memoir
Darlene Matule
Sixty Shades of Love
A Memoir
Copyright © 2018 Darlene Matule. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-3967-8
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-3968-5
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3969-2
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
Also by Darlene Matule
Under the Gallus Frame
Framework of a Family
I dedicate this memoir to my dear husband, Steve.
We’ve been through the worst of times and the best of times. Together.
We met on a dance floor. We’re still dancing.
After over sixty years, I am blessed to be able to say, “I’m married to my best friend.”
“Great marriages don’t happen
By luck or accident.
They are a result of a consistent
Investment of time, thoughtfulness,
Forgiveness, affection, prayer,
Mutual respect and a rock-solid
Commitment between a
Husband and wife.”
Dave Willis
Chapter 1
“It’s been sixty years since our first date,” he exclaims.
“Sixty years? Impossible!”
And I remember . . . From April 15, 1955 to now. Dancing to dreading. Sunshine to snowstorms. And everything in between.
We met on a dance floor.
How do I get rid of this guy? I wondered. At a college mixer, stuck dancing with a Central American foreign exchange student who smelled like he’d lived in his skintight chartreuse shirt for a month. Who’d been holding me possessively close for three dances.
I looked for an out.
His greasy friend still stood at the edge of the dance floor, undressing me with his eyes, drool edging down his chin. Waiting for his turn? I cringed, desperate to get away.
At the end of a two-step, I felt a new, larger hand on my shoulder. Heard a different voice ask, “Wanna dance?”
I turned. Saw his fingers reach for mine. Fingers I would soon learn could stop a 95 miles per hour baseball as it tore into third base. I moved toward him. Smelled the scent of Old Spice. Felt him put one hand on my waist as his other gently laced our fingers together.
To the strains of I’m in the Mood for Love, he expertly guided me across the dance floor.
When the music ended I hung onto my savior. Quickly, the band began a jitterbug. Before I could tell New Guy I didn’t know how to fast dance, I found myself in the middle of the floor—dancing—having fun.
We danced together until the music stopped at midnight.
Thinking New Guy (I still didn’t know his name—he hadn’t asked me mine) would ask me out for a Coke, I was disappointed.
New Guy said, “My friend John is coming to pick me up. His wife’s gone, and I promised to go to Luigi’s with him after the mixer.”
So much for that, I thought. But The Squeezer had disappeared. I thanked my lucky stars.
I went to 24 Flavors with some girlfriends, had a cherry milkshake, and went back to the dorm. I had a hard time falling asleep.
The next morning Margaret, an upper classman, stopped me at breakfast and asked about my “date.”
“No date,” I said. “Don’t even know his name.” I told her what New Guy had saved me from. We giggled.
“Just so you know for later,” she said, “his name is Steve Matule. He’s a junior at Gonzaga. Supercharged the baseball team last spring. Set a Gonzaga batting record. Nice guy.”
Later that morning, I went downtown on the bus with some girlfriends. We had lunch. Shopped at The Crescent. I reveled in the whole floor of fabric available for my new project. (Back home in Montana I’d had to order special material from St. Louis or Seattle.) Then we saw Leslie Caron in the new movie, The Glass Slipper.
When I got back to the dorm, my phone was ringing.
“Hi, this is Steve Matule.”
Glad I’d learned his name, I said, “Hi.”
“How’d you like to go see Billy May with me tonight?”
Now, I was an unworldly, not quite nineteen-year-old college freshman. My only dates since I’d come to Spokane in September had been with my high school boyfriend who’d quit school at the end of the first semester and gone back home to Montana.
I asked, “Who’s Billy May?”
For a full minute, I heard silence. Luckily, he patiently explained. “Billy May has a Big Band. He’s playing tonight at Natatorium Park.”
I wavered. I had full intention of beginning my long-put-off English project that Saturday night.
“I’ve got to start a term paper. I’m already late.”
Another moment of silence.
“We’d be going with your friend Midge Bird (a popular upper-classman) and Jerry Lehigh,” he encouraged.
I took a big breath.
“What time?”
When he arrived at 7:30, I was wearing a royal blue taffeta dress and blue suede high heels.
We danced every dance. He twirled me around the floor. I followed his lead. Had the best time I’d ever had in my life.
After the music ended, Steve took us all to dinner. The service was slow.
“We’re going to miss our deadline,” Midge worried.
“No problem,” Steve said. He called our house mother, Mrs. Smith, who said, “Have fun. I’ll wait up for the girls.”
My life changed that day—April 15, 1955.
Steve managed to see me at least a few minutes every day the next week. For a milkshake. A stroll through the Gonzaga campus. A milkshake. A walk down to the nearby Spokane River. A milkshake.
But by late that Saturday afternoon, Steve still hadn’t called to invite me out that evening. And I thought he was interested, I agonized. I knew I was.
So when, at the last minute, my friend Monica asked if I’d be her boyfriend’s brother’s date to a Gonzaga mixer, I agreed. Not much fun, I told myself