Passages

My Special.

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By Steve Dimeo
W
orried   because  of my weight loss and severe  depression after my first wife of ten years left me early in 1976, my parents couldn't have been happier when I met Nettie two months later.
As   a   lesson   for   my divorce-acceptance class, I had to ask the first single person who walked into my office  out  on  a  date.   Our assignment was just supposed to prove that we could get up enough courage to ask—it didn't matter if the person turned us down.
Nettie, always late, happened to walk in early that fateful morning. Although she looked ten years younger then myself, I knew her to be near my age. Nettie was a bleached blonde with shoulder-length hair and oversized bangs. She looked like a more balanced version of Dolly Parton. That day, she wore an old-fashioned mid-calf floral-patterned dress. She looked so pretty.
Not very good at the dating
thing, I walked up to her and
asked her for a date point-blank.
Taken  aback,  she  stammered
that she'd have to think it over.
An hour later, as I was on my
way out, she almost tripped me
IK when she backed up her secre-
56 tarial chair and slipped me a

note with her home phone number on it.
"Sure, I'll go out with you, Steve," she whispered. "Call me later, okay?"
I couldn't believe it. She had said yes!
On our first date, we went to a movie that ended up winning the Oscar for Best Picture, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." We later joked that it set the tone for our relationship. Well, that was only partly true.
At dinner one night with my folks, my mother dubbed Nettie my special angel because she had managed to rescue me from

my deep depression. Nettie recognized my mother's reference right away—the original 1957 hit sung by country-western star Bobby Helms. From that point forward, I would forever link the song with her.
Nettie had grown up listening   to   country-western music, as had I—although I was a more reluctant convert. A pianist and accordion-player conversant with classical and 30's  oldies,   Nettie  also   liked Freddie   Fender's   "Before  the Next Teardrop Falls" and Charlie Rich's "Behind Closed Doors." We  appreciated   their  sentiments,    especially   as   they applied to our relationship. Such favorites also endeared her to my dad.
In addition to Nettie's taste in music, my parents also approved of her other midwest-ern priorities, embracing her not just as a godsend for my recovery, but also as a prospective daughter-in-law. Though Nettie relished her job as a receptionist, she also loved taking care of me and our house—from cleaning, doing the wash and ironing, to knitting both of us booties, acting as a much better handyman than I ever was, and making special dishes like homemade biscuits. After our engagement in Octo-