The Fabulous 52

A Love Letter to Liza

Saturday afternoon. October 1966. Claremont, California. 

The day we met! 

Growing tired of the study carrel in the library, I wandered down to the stadium where our fierce Fighting Sagehens of Pomona College were facing off against the Occidental Tigers.  Fall was in the air, sweater weather.  Some students still had the sweaters thrown over their shoulders with the sleeves tied in a loose knot across the chest – the uniform of the day. 

I ran into my dear alumni friends, Don and John, back on campus to celebrate Homecoming Weekend.  They were standing with Linda and Nancy, current seniors and their affianced.  With them was this other girl.

“Tim, this is Liza Bean.”

“Liza, this is Tim Piatt.”

How do these things work?  What chemical or electrical impulses go off like fireworks, causing your brain to explode, causing your pulse to accelerate to Mach Four, causing your heart to meltdown?  All I know is that the punch in the chest started with: “Nice to meet you, too.”     

Years later at our reunions, these friends of ours would remember that moment, because of the way we ignored everyone and everything around us … and stared at each other.  And I remember that moment, because of the way we ignored everyone and everything around us … and stared at each other. 

At class the following Tuesday, Linda sat down next to me and asked, “Sooo, what did you think about Liza?”  That was the only thing I had done for four days – think about Liza.  While I was wondering if your desire to hear from me was as strong as my eagerness to call you, your co-conspirator Linda gave me your number.  You told me later that you ran the cord under your dorm room door and left your phone in the hallway with a note:  “If a guy named Tim calls, PLEASE tell him to call the front desk,” where you were working the evening shift on the switchboard. 

As we began our dating dance, we drove along Foothill Boulevard, and the aroma of the blossoms was intoxicating.  I told you about the groves in my life – my granddad’s avocados and the oranges that surrounded our house when I was just a little kid.

You told me of the considerable ribbing you took over your name.  Oh, how you wished your family had held on to the name of your ancestral Scottish clan, and you could have been Liz McBain instead of Liza Bean.  But right from the first, you were a rose by any name to me, and not in name only. 

We had been dating about two weeks when I went to my brother’s law office and told him I had met THE GIRL I was going to marry.  You came to dinner with my brothers, their wives, their kids, and our parents.  They teased you and it was bedlam, and you loved it.  They loved you from the start, and you found the welcome embrace of another family – a family whose name you would take, into whose tree you would be grafted, and all of whom love you still. 

You told me about being governor of Girls State, and how you informed your father that you were the most important girl in all of Arizona.  You have been living that down for years, but you are still and always my most important girl.

We shared our exchange-student stories about France, spoke in French, went to the Village Theater to see Les Parapluies de Cherbourg; and afterwards, we danced in the street.  We went to The Huddle, where we closed the joint, dancing to the music of Teddy Buckner and his band.  We went to Disneyland, took the cruise on the Mark Twain riverboat, and slow danced to sweet and plaintive jazz, played by the elegant black octogenarians known as the “Young Men of New Orleans.”   

The dance has been lovely, Liza, for fifty-two years. 

Years ago, there was a TV offering of classic films every Saturday night called “The Fabulous 52.”  Fifty-two weeks a year of the best of movies.  Fifty-two weeks a year — for the last fifty-two years — of the best of wives.    

Fabulous 52 indeed!  Happy 52^nd Anniversary.

August 17, 2020

Love you!  Love, Me!