I don’t believe in love at first sight, but several times in my life, I have met someone and known immediately that we had everything to talk about and we should just curl up on the couch right now and get started. Nancy is one of those people.

We met at seventeen. I was wearing an actual Scottish kilt and a stiff white blouse. They probably looked terrible on me, and I felt overdressed and awkward. I don’t remember what Nancy wore. We had both been flown to Swarthmore College as candidates for the Eugene M. Lang Scholarship.

They don’t call Swarthmore “the Quaker matchbox” for nothing. The people who go there are pretty self-selecting and the Lang candidates were a sub-set of that. So odds were we had a lot in common. But, I didn’t spend all week-end with the other candidates.

Nancy and I dropped in on some drinking party and left. We went to the Women’s Center coffee house. Flickering candlelight, paper taped to the tables with crayons to draw right there--it was everything I had dreamt college would be. Add to that chocolate chip cookies still warm from the oven, folk music, and this woman who talked intensely about peace.

I didn’t get the scholarship, but I got a friend for life.