CONTINUING ED
Dawn Bedore Proctor
“When you walked in, I thought to myself,” he said, “Now the group is complete… we have a dumb blonde.”
“Oh, yeah?” I replied. Not offended in the least. Then what happened?”
He replied looking straight into my eyes. “You started speaking.”
It was an unlikely beginning to his wooing me. I had surprised him. And would surprise him again. Surprised him by taking his heart. Unexpectedly. Completely. But I was not in The Plan. And Edward was all about The Plan.
We were taking the same class, a little one credit creative writing thing, that met once a week and didn’t assign homework. It was one of those notorious easy credit courses. That was pretty much its entire function. To give liberal arts credit to people who spent most of their time on the field or court. Edward was pre-law. He fit the profile perfectly. He was interested in the credit. I was interested in the course. That was my problem. I found everything interesting. Reading over the syllabus for the new semester was like browsing a deliciously promising menu. I wanted to taste it all. Because near as I could tell, everything you could learn was worth knowing. And everything worth knowing was related to everything else.
But Edward was pre-law. And for him it was all about the law, and about being in college studying to someday practice the law. He had been planning it since he was a boy, spending summers with his parents in Madison. His father was a mild mannered, very popular high school teacher who would come to the UW in the summer to earn continuing credits. He, his wife and their clearly identifiable seven children, including Edward, would live in a tent village on the shores of Lake Mendota that sprang up just to provide housing for these summer sessions. Large canvas tents were set on wooden platforms overlooking the bay. One per family. Army cots and aluminum cutlery. Morning swims off the cool rocky shore. Endless afternoons playing with the other teacher’s children. Incredible sunsets day after day.
And so, Edward’s love affair with the University was born and nurtured. And it was mutual. He could have been the poster boy for the U.W. He had a shock of black hair, dancing blue eyes and a zest for life found only in the best of us. He was a believer. A true believer. In liberal causes, in the glory of nature, in the rightness of the world. He was brilliant, hard-working and gloriously naive.
Unlike Edward, I moved straight to Madison from a very small town and I had a lot to learn…about living in the city and attending college. Edward taught me all about what it meant to belong to the University, he belonged as completely as anyone could. He loved everything about it. We walked everywhere. He could already name all the buildings. He knew all the short cuts. His allegiance was complete and unquestioning. He walked me up Bascom Hill and we sat piously at Lincoln’s feet overlooking the city’s main artery, the slightly crooked State Street leading all the way to the Capitol. He took me to $1 movies at the Commerce building and I saw Casablanca and the Marx Brothers for the first time. He introduced me to the spring beauty of the Regatta and its eight-man skulls over Oreos and beer. He immersed me in the sights and sounds of the Memorial Union, the lunch counter at Rennebohm’s and the ice cream at Bascom Hall. He lived in the lakeshore dorms and played trombone in the marching band. He lived the student life with his whole, wide heart. And as we walked and talked, I saw the University through his reverent eyes.
But I never felt as welcome, or as comfortable, as I knew he did. The UW was his. Part of his living and breathing. His home. But I always felt like I was just visiting. I don’t think he ever understood that about me. I don’t think he could comprehend the feeling of not belonging. There are such people in the world. He got the University. I got a new life, away from a troubled home and, for me, everything was filled with possibility, so it didn’t matter which direction it went in. For Edward, there was only forward. Towards his goal of becoming a lawyer.
But I felt like a guest at party where I had underdressed. Barely able to afford school, I worked full time and couldn’t relate to the excitement of Friday nights and football Saturdays. I had to be at work. I accepted my position and hid my jealousy from my friends and the world. I got by on my Goodwill clothes, quick wit and my genuine Wisconsin grown pedigree. I was hungered by my curiosity and nourished by my willingness to learn.
The differences fell away as we fell violently in love. Against both our better judgments. A part of me knew that entering Edward’s life was just that…. entering a way of life that had a blueprint. Had a plan. Oh, it was a good plan. A plan many a mother might wish for her daughter. But it wasn’t my plan. Trouble was, I didn’t have one.
He was the most honest man I had ever met. There was only truth in him. When our freshman year ended and we each went back home to work, we wrote desperate and heartsick letters, missing each other like a lost limb. One day I got in my car and drove the 100 miles to the town he lived in and asked around until I got directions to his home. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he saw me pull into his driveway in my faded green Volkswagen beetle. He hung his head so his family wouldn’t see his face blushed with pleasure.
We both knew then we had found something special. Something we believed wouldn’t die. A young, complete love. With all the passion and force of first love. The feeling that is so new, so overwhelming, there is nothing that can stop it. He couldn’t do anything wrong. At least in my eyes. He was so driven and so certain. But it was the certainty that eventually drove us astray.
We couldn’t wait for the second year of school to start and it wasn’t long before we were living together. After spending each night at the library for the first few months, I began to get itchy. One night I suggested we stop at a local bar on the way home for a beer. The bar itself was a renowned student institution, always filled with other students who didn’t want to study. Edward agreed, but there was a difference, a subtle shift in our agenda. It was my idea, not his. And a whiff of disapproval emanated from the way he spoke. And a rift began to grow.
Maybe I had learned everything I needed to know from Edward. Maybe I was bored by his unwavering allegiance and unyielding loyalty to all things UW. Maybe I just wanted to slow down and not work as hard at school as he was. Not yet. Maybe I just knew I needed a plan of my own. A plan to inspire me like his plan inspired him.
My feelings for him turned almost overnight. I rebelled against his resistance to any changes I might want to make to our routine. And suddenly, so suddenly, I didn’t love him anymore. Not one iota. I felt no remorse, no heartbreak, only a sweet breeze of a freedom I had never experienced before. Going from my parent’s home to Edward’s world had been the beginning of a wonderful transformation. Moving away from Edward’s life to one of my own felt just as sweet.
As for Edward, I broke his heart. I broke it as completely as a heart can be broken. He suffered. He called, he wrote, he tried to talk. But I was already gone. As gone as could be. I moved out within a week and never looked back. I heard his grades suffered for a semester, but then recovered. His Plan was intact. His Plan sustained him.
How could I be so callous? So cruel? There was a freedom in me at stake. A freedom I had waited for, suffered for, worked hard for. My parents didn’t believe that women belonged in college. “Why bother?”, said my father. “You’ll just end up getting married anyway”
So, there was no money for me for college. I worked two jobs the summer before I left for freshman year to make tuition. I got a break when a cousin of mine was put in charge of small girl’s dorm house and she found a place for me. Eight hundred dollars for the year bought me a shared room and three meals a day. I had lettuce and tomato sandwiches from the Rennie’s counter for lunch each day. I couldn’t afford the bacon. I cleaned houses for my professors, baby sat their children and bussed tables at an Italian restaurant till 2 p.m. in the morning. And I loved every minute of it. It was finally my life. My parents and siblings moved to Arizona weeks after I left for school. My Dad had bronchitis and they were just waiting for me to leave so they could leave. I barely saw them again after that and have to say I hardly missed them at all. I was really all on my own. The first night I worked, I locked my new bike to a small tree. When I came out in the early hours of morning, the bike was gone. Walking back to the dorm was my University, was my experience. I needed to be strong and find my own way. Edward and I loved each other from the moment we saw each other. But it couldn’t change our backgrounds or our trajectories. I could see that when he couldn’t. And so, it was up to me to set him free to follow his Plan.
I never doubted I had done the right thing. Eventually, I would have derailed the Plan. Somehow or other. Sooner or later. I would have been found wanting. And I didn’t want the sum of my life to be measured by how well I fit into Edward’s Plan. I would have been bad for him, in the long run. And not the future I wanted for myself.
Last I heard, he had made partner with a prestigious law office in Milwaukee. He was married, to another attorney, and had two sets of twins. He still came to the UW to play in the Alumni band when given the opportunity and, I have no doubt, felt completely at home on the endless deep green fields of Camp Randall…still in love with the University and secure in the outcome of his Plan.
As for me, I changed my major so often it took me 13 years to work my way through school and receive my degree in Horticulture. I would eventually go on to graduate school, but had to drop out first for lack of funds. Now, I’ve lived in Madison for nearly 30 years and still can’t call it home with a whole heart. I’ve seen the other side of the coin, the struggles and indecision of a hard, young life and can’t forget it. But each fall, I take the long walk up Bascom Hill and sit at Lincoln’s feet. I hear the sweet bells of the Carillon. I stroll through the Student Union and inhale the eternal scents of popcorn and beer. I remember what it felt like to be here as a student, even on the fringes. When cool spring arrives, I revisit the Regatta and find beauty and majesty in the eight-man skulls. And I send a silent thank you for the gifts I received from Edward and his Plan.