Giving thanks: Right woman, right time, right place

I couldn’t await his return. I was pledged to spend that year— my first after graduating Penn law school— as a VISTA volunteer, providing legal assistance to community action groups in Chicago. In fact, I was supposed to be there at that moment.

My group of 20 had completed our training and had been paired up, assigned to neighborhoods and given a week to find housing, contact the groups within our areas, and advise them of the availability of our services. But two of my fellow VISTAs had girlfriend in the San Francisco Bay area. They planned to let their partners handle these formalities while they would find a car dealer who needed a vehicle delivered to the Bay area, zip out for a couple days, pick up a car going in the other direction, and return to Chicago before anyone knew they were gone.

All they needed was a third to split the driving, so they wouldn’t need to stop and sleep en route.

Summer of Love

They didn’t have to ask me twice. The Summer of Love had just ended. I had been transfixed by the freedom and flamboyance displayed in color photos (in Ramparts magazine) of people my age walking around in Haight-Ashbury. In the mid-’60s, when everyone’s future seemed in flux, this discovery demanded my investigation.

So I called a young doctor friend, who was interning at Kaiser, and he said I could crash with him. “C’mon, man,” he said. “It’s far out.”

Plus there was this girl. Adele and I had dated for a few months in college, but senior year she had broken up with me. She had gone to San Francisco to study writing with Mark Harris, and I had gone to law school at Penn, a continent away.

Steve McQueen’s example

The first year, out of the blue, she had written me, proposing we marry and join the Peace Corps. I reacted by asking myself: What would Steve McQueen do? So I played it cool, waited a week before replying, and didn’t hear from her again.

For three years— when “Since I Fell For You,” came on the bar’s jukebox— I had thought about Adele. Some evenings, after dropping off a date, I would find myself cruising Baltimore Pike, thinking the same thing.

Now, in San Francisco, I visited the return address on Adele’s letter and found her gone. I counted Mark Harris as my last chance.

An invitation

I can imagine my expression.

“Can I help?” Linda Puccioni said.

I explained the problem.

“We have an open registry,” she said.

Even in those more innocent days, it was a surprise. In my recollection, which may be flawed, the registry stood beneath a covered kiosk, within a quadrangle’s open space. And once directed there, any seeker could find any student’s home address and phone number.

When I called, Adele invited me over. The next day, she took me on a picnic on Mount Tamalpais. When my year in VISTA service finished, I moved in with her. We’ve been together 45 years.

When we think about being grateful, it’s usually in general terms: for good health, financial security, family, partners, friends. Amid the random chaos of life, we often overlook the contributions of those who walking on as apparent bit part players in the drama of our lives.

So this Thanksgiving season I consider Linda Puccioni. If she had been less sensitive or less considerate toward this forlorn stranger before her, I would have walked away toward God knows what.

Such interactions— touched by grace or having it withheld—shift and shape our lives.