This Valentine’s Day I thought I’d post this lovely story of how I met my wife. I hope you enjoy it.
Stu
I first saw my future wife on the revolving stage of the old Ontario Place Forum. I mean, we were both on the stage. This Valentine’s Day I want to find someone who was in the audience.
In the summer of 1976, The National Ballet of Canada was performing at Ontario Place and I had been hired to play trumpet in the orchestra. There’s no obvious place to put musicians on a circular stage but we set up with our backs to the dancers and the conductor looking over the tops of our heads. In the audience that night sat a very proud “ballet mother,” Pamela Reiser, and on stage was her daughter.
At one point when the audience was clapping between numbers, Mrs. Reiser felt a tap on her shoulder. Turning around, she saw a woman behind and a few seats across. “Excuse me,” the stranger said, leaning in, “That was a lovely solo by Wendy Reiser. You’re her mum, aren’t you?” Swelling with pride, Mrs. Reiser acknowledged the truth of that statement. During the next applause there came another tap on the shoulder, and this time the stranger whispered: “Does your daughter have a boy friend?” Mrs. Reiser politely answered yes to this curious question and returned her attention to the stage.
Yet another shoulder tap came a few minutes later, and this time the woman carefully pointed to a particular person at the back of the orchestra; “Would your daughter’s boyfriend be that trumpet player over there?” Now this was strange. Mrs. Reiser stiffened a little and said no, that trumpet player was definitely not her daughter’s boyfriend. To this, the stranger replied, “Well, you better watch out, because he’s going to be.”
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I shudder now to think of the spectacle I must have made that night, swiveling my head at every opportunity, trying to follow Wendy’s progress among the dancers behind me. I continued my pursuit after the show, but missed her by waiting at the wrong door. Six weeks later, though, the entire company left for a tour of the Maritimes. While boarding a coach to the airport Wendy encountered me for the first time. She gave a lovely smile, but I apparently looked through her as though she were made of stone. (Questioned about this much later, I said truthfully that I’d been preoccupied, having decided in that instant to marry her.)
Friends tried to caution me, saying that Wendy had never dated orchestra members and in any case already had a boyfriend. I knew it would be easy for her to turn me down by phone, but harder face to face, so on the first free day I went up to her hotel room and knocked, explaining that the hotel phones were broken (which wasn’t true) and there was no alternative but to come up. I tried my best to be charming. Disarmed or amused by this approach, she agreed to go out with me, and we had a magical first date, walking up Halifax’s Citadel Hill together and watching the moon rise over Peggy’s Cove.
We covered a lot of ground that night. I remember discussing how many children we wanted, and it also came out that she had broken up with her boyfriend only the day before the tour. The funny part is that her mum happened to call a few days later and Wendy told her she’d met a new guy. “Wait a minute,” her mum said, thinking back furiously to the summer, “Is he… is he a trumpet player?” “Yes,” said Wendy, not knowing whether to be annoyed, “What are you doing, spying on me?” It was only then that Wendy heard the Ontario Place story for the first time. I tell it now because I want to find that woman from the audience long ago, or at least have her know just how wonderfully her crystal ball was working. I hope she contacts me.
Wendy and I married in 1978, just after she left ballet to enter Brock University. Dr. Wendy Reiser graduated from University of Toronto medical school in 1984 and has been a family physician in Burlington, Ontario ever since. Everything wonderful in my life I owe to her. We have three children, one fewer than we agreed on our first date. I am still a musician.
Stuart Laughton, laughtonstuart@gmail.com
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