I started dating Jeff Wilkinson by inviting him to go with me to the Rebelette Ball (… Rebelettes … it’s a long story) in our junior year of high school. I have so many stories about Jeff and the almost four years of high school and college that we dated ( … off and on, as these things happened) that I am struggling to choose one. Some memories are just snapshots (Jeff saying, “rich, not gaudy” in a tone my husband and I still use to this day. Learning about baseball to cheer on Jeff’s beloved Pittsburgh Pirates. Watching Christmas Vacation and watching Jeff recite every line — something I continue to do each year, reciting them now myself.).

The beloved Wilkinsons at home, circa 1991.

One thing that suffuses our time together in high school is the love of his parents, Tom and Tana, and his sister Taryn. I hadn’t been that close with another family before in my life, and I found them warm, funny and fascinating. I have my own snapshots of them (shopping with Taryn for clothes, feeling like an indulgent big sister; tasting Tom’s [Mr. Wilkinson to me!] beloved salt and vinegar potato chips, which I despised then and love now; eating vegetarian soup that Tana [Mrs. Wilkinson still in my mind … ] made just for me, and pretending I didn’t notice it was made of chicken stock), but tonight’s specific thank you is for the sense of humor they shared with me.

Theirs was a family that loved to laugh. They traveled to Europe together, they waxed cars (endlessly) together, they ate dinner together. They shared a goofy and theatrical sense of humor that I envied and admired. One night, they took me out to a Chinese restaurant we all loved. In Houston, around 1991, eating with chopsticks was a rare and wonderful feat. Because my parents spent four years in Japan (my sister and I were both born there), we learned early how to use them, and by high school I was quite a master.

The Wilkinsons were pretty awed by my skill, and someone asked, “How did you learn to use chopsticks so well?” Without missing a beat, I said, “I was born in Japan.” Of course, I forgot that my audience this night knew me pretty well, and knew that while I had indeed been born, my whole family had moved back to the U.S. when I was just four-months old. There was a moment of sustained hilarity until Mr. Wilkinson said, “They teach you at four months old in Japan?” and then we all just cracked up.

Even in recreating the night, I can’t clarify what was so wonderful about it — the fact that we were all laughing at me so gently, that I was so known, that we were at a restaurant we all loved and I felt like ‘part of the group,’ or just that I was so happy to be in the same circle as this lovely family. Probably a mix of all of the above.

When I see or talk to Jeff, every 10 years or so, I always ask about his beloved parents and sister — he was my first true love, and I always include his family in the warm memories I carry with me. I was lucky to know them at a seminal moment in my life. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Wilkinson, Taryn and dear Jeff, for welcoming me into your heart and home.

I still use chopsticks really well. I was born in Japan, you know.