From This Day Forward Read Free

car and saying to myself, “You made a mistake by not calling her.” Even before I got in the car, I knew there was something there. And the whole way down to Washington, we talked even though others were in the car.
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    CR: When we arrived at the house late that night, Steve had a terrible cold; he was coughing and hacking all through the night.
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    SR: I was staying in Cokie’s girlhood room—later our daughter’s room—and at some point I heard a knock on the door. Since this was 1963, I pretty much figured it wasn’t Cokie. The door opened and there stood my future mother-in-law dressed in this flowing peach negligee—clouds of peach. I sat up in bed and my mouth just dropped to the floor. I had never met a woman like this in Bayonne, New Jersey. And she whispered, “Now, darling, you sound terrible, drinkthis.” She didn’t have to say “Open your mouth” because my mouth was already open! And it was some home brew, probably three-quarters bourbon, but it did the trick. The family joke is that I fell in love with my mother-in-law first and then got around to Cokie! And there’s some truth to that.
    We went to the conference the next day and a party that night. Bob Kaiser was there, and he was angling to take Cokie home, but since I was staying there, I had the inside track. We stayed up half the night talking in the den, and at some point Cokie made us scrambled eggs. In many ways we’ve been together since that night. It was clearly a turning point in terms of starting to feel connected to each other.
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    CR: Also during that trip, we went to visit my brother Tommy and sister-in-law Barbara’s house. They were only twenty-two and twenty-three but they already had two children. Elizabeth was six months old and Hale was one and a half. We walked in and I said, “Hale, this is my friend Steve.” Hale immediately started chanting, “Bite, dump, bite, dump.” Steve was totally mystified and somewhat miffed because he didn’t understand why everyone was laughing. Well, Hale had a Little Golden Book called Steve the Steam Shovel, and the steam shovel spent all day going, “Bite, dump, bite, dump.” You learned quickly that if you were going to have a relationship with me, you were going to have a relationship with all these other people.
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    SR: That’s true. That first weekend certainly set a tone—meeting Cokie’s mother, meeting Barbara and Tommy and those tykes who are now the parents of our grand-nieces and-nephews. And that was very much the way life was and continued to be; family always comes first.
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    CR: Then we drove home and we smooched all the way back even though there were other people in the car—but that part was embarrassing.
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    SR: That was embarrassing. But fun.
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    CR: So we had had this whole long night of talking, we had our embarrassing ride home, then we went out on a date and had a good time. Then you didn’t call again.
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    SR: True enough—it took some sherry to push me over the edge. I lived in Eliot House, and our master, John Finley, regularly invited interesting people over for dinner. The guest one evening was a visiting professor of English named Mark Van Doren, and since I was taking his wonderful course that spring, I was the first one to sign up. Those dinners were among the few times that serving alcohol was officially sanctioned—we always heard that some rich alum had given a grant to supply the house with sherry. I had several drinks and was getting a buzz going and Van Doren was a marvelous speaker and the whole evening was just terrific. And I had to talk to somebody about it. I went back to my dorm room and I was bouncing off the walls and I called Cokie and started babbling.
    Luckily I was supposed to speak on a panel at Radcliffe the next weekend. Harvard was a very sexist place—Master Finley used to say that his job was to keep his