Romance, Romance

Jefferson and Denise at a concert, October 2025.

Forty-seven years ago, in April 1979, I met the love of my life on a Greyhound bus outside Quebec City, Canada. We went to rival high schools that shared a French teacher. Every three to four years Mr. Burt organized a French club trip to Canada. We lived twelve miles apart but met 925 miles from home.

Do you believe in love at first sight? I noticed her immediately, before the bus even pulled away from where we boarded. She was sitting across the aisle with one of her friends and they were playing cards. Not together, they were playing solitaire. I was captivated. That day the bus drove from Springfield to Niagara Falls. I kept glancing at her across the aisle. I was very shy, and at that time my philosophy around meeting people was that if they were worth knowing, they would introduce themselves, so I did not approach her. (Writer's Note:  I'm a super introvert. I'm not sure that philosophy has changed much.) That evening, I watched her from across the room as we all gathered in the hotel lobby to walk to the falls. I made sure to keep her in sight all evening.

The next day, she was sitting in row in front of me, still playing cards. I was reading--the trip was for six days, so I had two novels with me: Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough for Love. At some point, she turned around in her seat to talk to me (see, people worth knowing will always introduce themselves!)

"You don't talk much, do you?" she asked.

"No, I don't," I said and went back to my book. I was really shy.

Luckily for me, she was persistent, so by the time we pulled into Quebec City we were talking and I knew her name was Denise and she was sixteen. I also knew, but did not understand why, that my life had changed in ways that I had never imagined possible. By the time we left Quebec City four days later, we were inseparable. We got off the bus with a promise that I would give Denise a call sometime, but nothing concrete. My shyness had returned. It would have been very easy for me to never call, but I did. A month after we got home, I took Denise to my senior prom. Two years later we moved in together and a year later, in June 1982, at the end of my junior year at Ohio State, we were married.

Romantic, huh? Sounds like the plot of a romance novel. Romance is magical, but we use it to hide the truth about the messiness and fragility of love. That's why I wrote Love: a novel of grief and desire. Ed's experience reminds us that the all relationships--including the strongest--end. Why do we risk loving someone when we know the pain it will ultimately cause? One reason, certainly, is the magic and absolute joy of those moments of connection that demonstrate that we are not alone, not solitary, but at our best in connection with others. Even if we don't want to talk to them.

Discover more at www.jeffersonblackburnsmith.com

We cannot abide cruelty. As spring arrives think about how you can spread beauty across your communities.