Under the best of circumstances, and particularly since being under lock and key for Covid, I’m notoriously calendar challenged. It’s even worse when I’m deep in writing a book. For instance, while writing UJB #22—UJB=Unnamed Joanna Brady)I’ve been living on August 29, 2024 for the past couple of weeks.

As a consequence I was surprised to learn that Father’s Day is on June 21. For some reason I thought it came earlier in the month, but it turns out this year we’ll have more than one reason to celebrate.

In June of 1985, I was invited to do a poetry reading of my book After the Fire, which had been published in 1984, at a widowed retreat at a YMCA camp on the Hood Canal. The woman who issued the invitation was Diane Bingham, a Vietnam Widow, who was one of the movers and shakers behind WICS—Widowed Information Consultation Services of King County.

After the Fire tells the story of my eighteen-year relationship with a man who died of chronic alcoholism at age 42. If you happen to have any first-hand knowledge of living in an addictive relationship, you have some idea of what that life was like.

After five years of dating and thirteen of being married, I finally called it quits and got a divorce. My husband passed away a year and a half later. The problem is, that piece of paper doesn’t make all those years of feelings go away—a reality many of the poems in After the Fire make abundantly clear. As for some of my co-workers in the insurance business? I remember one of them telling me, “What are you upset about? You divorced the guy, didn’t you?”

So I was worried about going to the retreat. For one thing, this would be my first ever public reading and signing because the first Beaumont book wasn’t due to be published until later that month. For another it was a WIDOWED retreat. All the other people who would be there were still married to their spouses at the time they died. I was divorced.

When I arrived at the registration table, I expressed my misgivings about being there to the hostess checking me in. She said, “Honey, if you feel like grieving, this is the place to do it.”

That evening one of the few people I actually did know at the retreat invited me to sit at her table, and during the course of diner I was introduced to a whole bunch of people. The next day at lunch, still at the same table, I sat near a male friend of hers. My reading was scheduled for early Saturday afternoon, and I thought he might show up for it, but he didn’t.

That evening there was a choice of activities—an outside egg race or an inside support group gathering. Remembering my hostess’s advice, I opted for the latter. When I entered the room, there were probably forty people seated in a circle. Still uneasy about having my ticket punched for being there, I grabbed a seat next to the facilitator.

First we were supposed to say our name, our spouse’s name, when they died, and what they died of. I said, “My name is Judy, my husband’s name was Jerry, and he died of chronic alcoholism a few minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve 1982-83.

As the introductions continued, the next guy up who was seated at approximately ten o’clock in the room, happened to be the same one I’d met at both dinner the night before and lunch that day. He said. “My name is Bill, my wife’s name was Lynn, and she died of breast cancer just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, 1984-85. Whammo. We share that same date! I thought.

Then we were supposed to give a little personal background. I said that I’d been on my own for five years. Since no one was ringing my doorbell at my downtown-Seattle condo, obviously my life as a woman was over, so I was raising my kids, writing my books, and making the best of a bad bargain.

Then I waited to hear what Mr. Ten O’clock would say which turned out to be ZIPPO. As in NADA. So by the time the support group was over, I was pissed at him and went looking for him with blood in my eye. I found him out by the bonfire where people were roasting marshmallows.

I marched up to him with a huge chip on my shoulder and demanded, “So what are you, the strong silent type?” He looked at me and said, “No, it still hurts too much to talk about it.”

Within FIVE MINUTES, I was literally weeping on his shoulder and thinking, “This is so stupid but it feels so good.” Meanwhile he was standing there with one hand around my waist while trying to figure out what to do with his other hand.

Why that momentary confusion? Because we had both married the first person we ever dated and were about the marry the second! We met at dinner on June 21, the first night of the retreat, and married six months later on December 21. Our first actual date turned out to be the grand-opening signing for the first Beaumont book which occurred the following week.

So on Sunday, we’ll be celebrating Father’s Day, yes, but we’ll also be celebrating that fact that 41 years ago we were both brave enough to take that bold leap of faith and accept the idea that love really could be lovelier the second time around.

It has been, and that’s why that signing is truly my best book signing ever even if Bill didn’t actually show up for it.

PS. If you happen to have one of those first editions of After the Fire, the one with the brown cover, you really do have a rare book. Only 500 of those were ever printed.