Still Crazy

“Still Crazy After All These Years” was playing on the car radio on the way to our usual Sunday breakfast.

“Story of my life,” Gary said.

I chuckled like I always do when Gary says he’s crazy. I don’t see it. To me he’s solid and responsible and hard working – not at all what I think of as crazy. But he does see things in a different way from most people, and that’s probably what attracted me to him in the first place. I have never been considered crazy. I’ve always been the sensible one, no matter how much I might have wished for a crazy streak.

Secretly, I always wanted to be a hippie, but my Midwestern sensibility would never let me stray very far. I’d try on long flowing skirts and beads and tie-dye, but I’d buy classic conservative clothes. No matter how much I wanted to feel right in the clothing of a free spirit, I didn’t.

I was geared toward the practical, making a living, following the straight and narrow path. But I didn’t feel complete or authentic that way either. My inner hippie might have been buried deep, but she still longed to make her way to the surface.

Then came Gary. He eased into my life. At first we didn’t think much of each other. He thought I was uptight and I thought he was kind of a jerk. The gal who’d tried to get us together gave up. A few months later we ran into each other in McDonald’s. I had on a hot pink mini dress and didn’t look so uptight. He was anything but a jerk and I thought maybe I’d misjudged him. He started calling to ask me out, but it was always at the last minute, and I already had plans. He took this as a challenge and kept calling. Finally, he was about to give up when in a last ditch effort he said, “You choose the date.” And I did.

On our first date he suggested we share one steak dinner. I thought he was a little cheap, but said okay, if I could have my own salad. Turns out one steak dinner for two was just right.

On our second date he suggested a motorcycle ride. I thought that was scary, but I rode behind him on his motorcycle anyway, my arms tight around his waist as we sped around the hairpin curves of Ortega Highway. I held on even tighter during the return trip down the freeway. I never would have done that on my own. He made me stretch my boundaries and my inner free spirit began to stir.

On weekdays he would be sitting on the steps by my apartment when I got home from work, and I started to look forward to rounding the corner and seeing him there. When the steps were empty, I felt let down.

Four months after our first date we got engaged. It wasn’t a particularly romantic moment. We were curled up on the sofa in his apartment, probably watching football, when he got up, went down the hall to his bedroom and came back with a jewelry box.

“Maybe we should get married,” he said, as he opened the box and showed me a wedding ring set.

I thought he was awfully casual about this proposal and wasn’t sure he was serious, but I said, “Okay.” Am I crazy, I thought? We barely know each other. But it just seemed right.

We bucked tradition and moved in together a few weeks later. People didn’t expect that of me. I was so conservative, such a good girl. That wasn’t the way good girls behaved in 1974. Who is this guy, they wondered?

My father came to stay with us for Christmas and met Gary for the first time - the business executive meets the artist.

“That’s an interesting guy you’ve got there, Elizabeth,” my father said, not knowing quite what to make of the man I was about to marry.

“Yes he is,” I said, thinking of all the ways Gary made my life more interesting, less ordinary.

Our wedding eight months later was unconventional, too. We had a beach party that doubled as a wedding. I wore a long cotton dress with cotton lace overlay, a puka shell necklace and a big white floppy hat. Gary wore a white cotton pull-on shirt with blue print material inset at the neck, yoke and sleeves. In the print Mickey Mouse cavorted in a field of flowers. Roger, the rent-a-reverend wore a wrinkled purple robe and a trio played Chicago’s “Color My World” as I walked across the patio on my father’s arm. While we made our promises to each other at sunset, strangers picnicked on the beach below and tossed a Frisbee back and forth. The mumbo jumbo, as Gary called it, was short-lived, but the party afterward lasted late into the night.

After thirty-six years, two sons, a business that’s had several incarnations, five houses, any number of family adventures, road trips and career twists and turns, we are still complementing each other, still filling in where the other needs us to, encouraging new pursuits and generally nurturing our spirits.

A few months ago our son, Eric, was at my computer desk and I heard him laughing.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“This picture of your wedding,” he said. A friend had been clearing out pictures and sent it to me. I’d left it on the desk.

“Why is that funny?” I said.

“You guys were such hippies!”

I guess, whether I knew it or not at the time, my inner hippie had worked her way to the surface and stood smiling broadly with her kindred spirit in my wedding picture. Crazy!

Copyright 2011 by Liz Zuercher