Jeff and I weren’t kids when we married. We were both over 30, well on to our adult lives, when we were married in that spring snow storm – March 21 – in Milwaukee. People in Wisconsin are not deterred by the snow; the church was full on that evening, regardless of the weather.
But like most couples (I suspect), we had to make our way slowly from being two headstrong, smart and heady individuals, to being a couple. Oh! the places we will go – and the emotions we will go through!
Or maybe it’s easier for other couples.
Both Jeff and I remember the first time we knew for sure we “two had become one.” It took awhile. Well, it took several years. We had moved into the beautiful Craftsman home in Oakland that we have called home since. We were proud of our home then, and we’re even more proud of our home now. We’d moved most of our furniture into the house, and everything was beautiful – to us. But we wanted a Craftsman style sofa to match the rest of the wood in the house – wood which (we are proud to say) no one has ever painted over. We discovered a business in Berkeley that sells Craftsman furniture exclusively, and we’d picked out the right sofa for our space. It was time to choose the fabric.
At the time, Oakland had a wonderful – wonderful – fabric store that has since closed. Many years later, folks who live in Oakland still remember Poppy Fabrics. So Jeff and I went off to Poppy Fabrics one afternoon to pick out the perfect fabric for our new sofa. We were methodical. We found the upholstery fabric and began at the left side of the aisle to look at one fabric after another. Then, we started up the aisle again.
And that’s when we knew. I stood to Jeff’s right as he moved the fabric rolls from side to side. And as he touched each fabric, and we looked at each fabric together for a few seconds, Jeff said: “Do we like it?“
“Do we like it?” That must have been a new experience, because we both noticed. I laughed when I heard him say it. Jeff looked around, surprised (but happy – he loves to make me laugh). We were a couple!
The fabric that proved that we had moved from “I” to “we”. Just the right colors. Photo by meb, 3/2/2026
