It was an old-fashioned situation. I had to go meet her family and spend some time with them before we could go out on our date. Stepping into that house was entering a different world. Kari’s parents had split up when she was in high school, and Pam had raised her four girls for seven years before she’d married Kari’s stepdad. Even with a man living there, it was still a house of women: neat and cozy, full of good meals, girlish laughter, and quiet secrets. This was the opposite of my childhood, with my dad and two brothers and my mom trying to hold her own in a sea of testosterone. Where the Whiteheads were big, rowdy, sarcastic, and always trying to pull a prank, Kari’s home was polite and appropriate.
Thankfully, I didn’t know what a big buildup my friend had given Kari. Amy told them I was a nice guy with a good job and who had a big family in the area. Kari had just broken up with a guy she had been dating since high school, and her sisters instigated this matchmaking because they were tired of Kari hanging around the house studying all day, but I think most of them still missed Kari’s former boyfriend. Kari’s sister Kristen, who is closest to her in age, looked at me skeptically when I stepped into the house. Her younger sisters, Brenda and Lindsey, who were in their early teens, took their cue from their mom, who liked me right away.
Kari and I went to see the movie Good Will Hunting and then I took her out to dinner. Amy had warned me that it would be hard to get Kari to talk because she’s very reserved, but I didn’t experience that. She had plenty to say, and she was a great listener. I always had more to say than she did, but she didn’t mind that.
Even though I was not looking for love, I couldn’t get her out of my mind in the weeks after we met. I wanted to take her to Sunday dinner to meet my family.
Back then, my mom made Sunday dinner every week for her sons and their girlfriends and any other members of the extended family who wanted to drop by. These dinners were noisy. My brothers and I were always teasing each other, insulting each other, telling terrible stories (many of them lies), and getting in pretend fights. Sometimes it could get crude. I could see the shock on Kari’s face as the evening began and I think she went from shock to numbness at about the halfway point of the meal because the contrast between our home and hers was so overwhelming.
When everyone was done eating and joking, I grabbed some paper plates and started loading them down with dinner for my great-uncle and great-aunt, who lived across the street but were too ill to come to Sunday dinner anymore. I also fixed a plate for my grandma, who lived a few blocks away. My custom was to drop by for a visit with these dinners and sit awhile to see how they were doing and find out if they needed anything. I asked Kari if she wanted to come along, or if she wanted me to drive her home first. To my surprise, she said she’d really like to come with me. I did not know that she found my connection to family very attractive. Score one for me!
“Your family dinners… they’re so different from mine,” she said.
“I bet that’s so,” I said.
“I mean, your brothers tell crude stories, and they swear,” she said. “That would never happen in our house.”
“Well, boys versus girls,” I said. “Can’t deny the difference.”
“And then you brought dinner to your aunt and uncle and your grandma,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “I never miss a week unless I’m sick.”
“And all I could think was, What kind of person does this?” she said. “It’s so kind.”
It’s hard to express how happy she made me then. If she liked my family, and I liked her, that was pretty much all that I needed for us to continue on and see what happened. I knew it would be much harder for me, though, because I still had to impress Robin.
Kari’s dad is a big guy, just like me, and he’s protective of his daughters. Even after the divorce, Robin kept a close watch on his four girls. He was the kind of dad who, if one of his daughters was at another girl’s house for a sleepover, might show up around midnight to make sure everything was as his daughter had described.
It took Robin more than a year before he stopped calling me Kari’s friend and advanced me to the category of boyfriend. I guess I had to earn my way in, and it didn’t always go smoothly. While I was angling for boyfriend status, I once made a huge mistake that set me back a few months.
We were out to dinner, along with Kari’s sisters. I wanted to show Robin that I was making money and could support his daughter well. When I went to the bathroom, I sneaked over and picked up the check, proud of myself for the gesture. But it backfired. He was offended, because he pays for his girls when they are together, and I had stepped on that.
By the time I was officially Kari’s boyfriend, Robin and I had had many long talks at his house while I enjoyed his superb grilled chicken and macaroni salad. He and I had become friends, and I was admitted into the family.
One of our more memorable dates was when I took her up in a little two-seater plane. I had started learning to fly the year before I met her, and Robin had cautioned Kari never to get up in a plane with me. She yearned to do it, though, and she finally