Shelly and Jon Blankman
From Diapers to Gown and Tuxedo
by Shelly Blankman
When I first met Jon Blankman we were in diapers. Our dads both worked in advertising and our parents were close friends at the time. We were like brother and sister until our parents parted company when we were in high school and I thought I‘d never see him again. When I watched videos on weekends of my father pushing a brown-eyed baby down a snow slope on a sled while I smiled and watched as a baby from my mother’s arms, I never dreamed I would marry that boy, have babies and grow old with him.
Fast forward to August 1979. I was part of a committee to form a “Singles Meeting Singles” group with him at the Jewish Community Center in Baltimore. I wasn’t looking for anyone. Tears had dried over past relationships and I wasn’t ready to date again yet – or ever. But planning a committee would be more my style. The seat next to me was as empty as my soul. As the group’s organizer introduced herself, a fly landed on the table in front of me and seemed to strike a pose, so I doodled it on my notepad. Jon plopped into the empty seat and scared the fly (and me), doodled a fly swatter, and swatted my doodled fly. I feigned anger, and we burst into laughter, much to the organizer's chagrin. And that was the start of a friendship that blossomed into a beautiful relationship, filled with humor that would get us through the toughest of times.
Jon was more religious than I and asked me to go to temple with him the following week. Little did I know that his voice would add yet another layer of my attraction to him. I could barely carry a tune. He, on the other hand, sang tenor that echoed gently in the sanctuary, giving me chills. We learned more about each other that night. He was a tech at an institution for intellectually challenged adults, teaching them life skills and tasks. I was the public relations director for the March of Dimes to help promote understanding and support for babies with birth defects. Our interests and experiences clicked.
On our first official date he took me to the zoo to see the giraffes. He knew that was my passion. But on that particular day, I was sick with a kidney infection. And as much as I was thrilled that he remembered how much I loved giraffes, I was too sick to enjoy the day. We walked around the grounds until I just couldn’t anymore, and asked him to take me home. I knew he’d never ask me out again.
I was wrong. He called the next morning and we never missed a day after that without talking or getting together. I was like a schoolgirl gushing over the very first boy I’d ever met.
We were married Aug. 10, 1980 and have been married now for 44 years. We have two wonderful sons, one married and living in New York and the other engaged and living in Texas. And we have filled our empty nest with four rescue cats that help complete our love story.
by Shelly Blankman
When I first met Jon Blankman we were in diapers. Our dads both worked in advertising and our parents were close friends at the time. We were like brother and sister until our parents parted company when we were in high school and I thought I‘d never see him again. When I watched videos on weekends of my father pushing a brown-eyed baby down a snow slope on a sled while I smiled and watched as a baby from my mother’s arms, I never dreamed I would marry that boy, have babies and grow old with him.
Fast forward to August 1979. I was part of a committee to form a “Singles Meeting Singles” group with him at the Jewish Community Center in Baltimore. I wasn’t looking for anyone. Tears had dried over past relationships and I wasn’t ready to date again yet – or ever. But planning a committee would be more my style. The seat next to me was as empty as my soul. As the group’s organizer introduced herself, a fly landed on the table in front of me and seemed to strike a pose, so I doodled it on my notepad. Jon plopped into the empty seat and scared the fly (and me), doodled a fly swatter, and swatted my doodled fly. I feigned anger, and we burst into laughter, much to the organizer's chagrin. And that was the start of a friendship that blossomed into a beautiful relationship, filled with humor that would get us through the toughest of times.
Jon was more religious than I and asked me to go to temple with him the following week. Little did I know that his voice would add yet another layer of my attraction to him. I could barely carry a tune. He, on the other hand, sang tenor that echoed gently in the sanctuary, giving me chills. We learned more about each other that night. He was a tech at an institution for intellectually challenged adults, teaching them life skills and tasks. I was the public relations director for the March of Dimes to help promote understanding and support for babies with birth defects. Our interests and experiences clicked.
On our first official date he took me to the zoo to see the giraffes. He knew that was my passion. But on that particular day, I was sick with a kidney infection. And as much as I was thrilled that he remembered how much I loved giraffes, I was too sick to enjoy the day. We walked around the grounds until I just couldn’t anymore, and asked him to take me home. I knew he’d never ask me out again.
I was wrong. He called the next morning and we never missed a day after that without talking or getting together. I was like a schoolgirl gushing over the very first boy I’d ever met.
We were married Aug. 10, 1980 and have been married now for 44 years. We have two wonderful sons, one married and living in New York and the other engaged and living in Texas. And we have filled our empty nest with four rescue cats that help complete our love story.
When Souls Converge
Perhaps there’s some truth that our souls were meant
to converge. That’s what you told me the first time we
met. I didn’t believe you, my soul battered and bruised by
tides of despair – dating less of a pleasure and more of
of a chore.
I must have seen you hundreds of times before we ever met-.
old yellowed family movies clicking through our projector,
your dad and my brother on one sled waving at the frosted lens,
and you, stuffed like a taco in a light-blue snowsuit, propped
up on Dad’s lap, your beet-red face half-buried in a furry cap.
Twenty years later, our paths would cross at a meeting. I hadn’t
wanted to be there. I hadn’t wanted to be anywhere. In a room
buzzing with animated conversation, I was a deflated balloon,
medicating my misery by doodling a fly with my pen. You
took my pen, doodled a swatter and murdered my fly. I laughed
for the first time in months. I’d forgotten how freeing laughter
could be. You literally swept me off my feet to carry me over
a creek at our first outdoor concert. You taught me to trust
and helped me to heal. You became my rock and my soft place
to fall. Nine months later, you got on one knee in your car
and proposed. Now, after 43 years of marriage, two wonderful
sons, and the rocky paths of illness, loss, and spats, our bond
has never broken. Butterflies still flit in my stomach with every kiss.
Every outing feels like our first date. I used to count the months
our love would last. Now, as we’ve grayed and illness has sabotaged
my health, I count the moments. The times I hear students blossom under your
tutelage. Whenever I catch you napping under a blanket of cats. When I see
your moral fiber and work ethics reflected in our sons. When I observe you
using your language skills to help immigrants.
You said our souls would be joined after we die. I didn’t believe you then.
Now, how strange it seems when souls converge and fantasy turns to fact.
Through My Darkness
I see you through my darkness,
your light shines through graying clouds.
You are steady as I tread through waters
too deep to stand. My wings are broken.
I cannot soar, my heart is filled with despair,
but I know you’re there as I struggle.
You keep me focused in the fog,
raise my spirits as you rise from water.
As long as you’re there, solid in a world of frailty,
a guiding force in submerging hope, I know
that beyond you is a calm tide flowing
toward a beach of peace.
Keys on the Beach
The sky burst open on the beach without warning that day,
whipping rain on neon-colored umbrellas, melting sandcastles
into moats, leaving magazines to flap away in the wind.
Sunbathers and swimmers grasped their children’s hands
and headed for shelter. I grabbed our beach gear as thunder
roared in the distance, like a lion awaiting its prey. Lightning
splintered the sky, hurricane winds hurled our blanket. Jon and
I clutched the kids’ hands as we slid through wet sand back to the hotel.
The man to whom I’d pledged my love through sickness and health
but never through hurricanes, asked for a hotel key I didn’t have.
He stood there dripping, stunned, like a runner who’d just lost a race
by a nanosecond. Now he ran for the gold, alone on a storm-drenched,
empty beach, leaving us we hunched under a wood-slatted roof, looking
through the rain-splotched window at our toasty room. Look, mom! At the
bottom of our tote, there they were. The keys. And somewhere in the
sprawling sea of sand was a man searching for something not there.
We were clean and dry by the time Jon returned, his brown curly hair
plastered against his back and neck, looking like a moving sand statue.
How about a shower, then dinner, he said, his face caked in grains
chipping off with each syllable. But first a shower.
I’ll put the key in my purse, I said.
How about in my pocket, he answered.
Good idea, I thought. Good idea.
Perhaps there’s some truth that our souls were meant
to converge. That’s what you told me the first time we
met. I didn’t believe you, my soul battered and bruised by
tides of despair – dating less of a pleasure and more of
of a chore.
I must have seen you hundreds of times before we ever met-.
old yellowed family movies clicking through our projector,
your dad and my brother on one sled waving at the frosted lens,
and you, stuffed like a taco in a light-blue snowsuit, propped
up on Dad’s lap, your beet-red face half-buried in a furry cap.
Twenty years later, our paths would cross at a meeting. I hadn’t
wanted to be there. I hadn’t wanted to be anywhere. In a room
buzzing with animated conversation, I was a deflated balloon,
medicating my misery by doodling a fly with my pen. You
took my pen, doodled a swatter and murdered my fly. I laughed
for the first time in months. I’d forgotten how freeing laughter
could be. You literally swept me off my feet to carry me over
a creek at our first outdoor concert. You taught me to trust
and helped me to heal. You became my rock and my soft place
to fall. Nine months later, you got on one knee in your car
and proposed. Now, after 43 years of marriage, two wonderful
sons, and the rocky paths of illness, loss, and spats, our bond
has never broken. Butterflies still flit in my stomach with every kiss.
Every outing feels like our first date. I used to count the months
our love would last. Now, as we’ve grayed and illness has sabotaged
my health, I count the moments. The times I hear students blossom under your
tutelage. Whenever I catch you napping under a blanket of cats. When I see
your moral fiber and work ethics reflected in our sons. When I observe you
using your language skills to help immigrants.
You said our souls would be joined after we die. I didn’t believe you then.
Now, how strange it seems when souls converge and fantasy turns to fact.
Through My Darkness
I see you through my darkness,
your light shines through graying clouds.
You are steady as I tread through waters
too deep to stand. My wings are broken.
I cannot soar, my heart is filled with despair,
but I know you’re there as I struggle.
You keep me focused in the fog,
raise my spirits as you rise from water.
As long as you’re there, solid in a world of frailty,
a guiding force in submerging hope, I know
that beyond you is a calm tide flowing
toward a beach of peace.
Keys on the Beach
The sky burst open on the beach without warning that day,
whipping rain on neon-colored umbrellas, melting sandcastles
into moats, leaving magazines to flap away in the wind.
Sunbathers and swimmers grasped their children’s hands
and headed for shelter. I grabbed our beach gear as thunder
roared in the distance, like a lion awaiting its prey. Lightning
splintered the sky, hurricane winds hurled our blanket. Jon and
I clutched the kids’ hands as we slid through wet sand back to the hotel.
The man to whom I’d pledged my love through sickness and health
but never through hurricanes, asked for a hotel key I didn’t have.
He stood there dripping, stunned, like a runner who’d just lost a race
by a nanosecond. Now he ran for the gold, alone on a storm-drenched,
empty beach, leaving us we hunched under a wood-slatted roof, looking
through the rain-splotched window at our toasty room. Look, mom! At the
bottom of our tote, there they were. The keys. And somewhere in the
sprawling sea of sand was a man searching for something not there.
We were clean and dry by the time Jon returned, his brown curly hair
plastered against his back and neck, looking like a moving sand statue.
How about a shower, then dinner, he said, his face caked in grains
chipping off with each syllable. But first a shower.
I’ll put the key in my purse, I said.
How about in my pocket, he answered.
Good idea, I thought. Good idea.
What a good sport, your husband, in that poem about the key! Congratulations on finding one another - again!
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