an old story

First Date, A Beginning

It was either summer or Christmas vacation because Betty was home from B.Y.U. She was sitting on her bed. I was sitting on my bed, watching her weed out old boy friend pictures. She was just two years older than I was, but always managed to have more old boyfriends. She was the picture of the perfect Mormon girl that I tried not to be the picture of. Not that I wasn’t spiritually minded. I believe I was - especially as a child, and I hadn’t lost it all, in fact, I worked at it - secretly. Betty was ready to tear up the next one. He had on a dark suit and tie, his face turned, slightly shaded. A dark flattop. Lips closed. An almost smile. Fine features. Eyebrows. A black and white missionary photo.

“Don’t,” I said. “He’s cute. What’s his name.” I grabbed the picture.

“Ken Babcock”

‘Ken Babcock. Jane Babcock. How would that sound. Not bad. I could live with that.’ I would.

He wrote me once from Mexico.*** Betty had written to him that I was the head of the Youth Missionary Committee. A terrible thing to be. And I was definitely not successful. The elders would come visit and put pressure on me to talk to my friends. What friends. I was not a friendly person. I did highschool, homework and read books.

I think I wrote him once too. Writing to a missionary would have been exciting. I didn’t see him in person until Valentine’s day a couple of years later. 1964. A lot had happened in the mean time. We left Denver for McLean, Virginia, after I graduated from Lincoln High. Come fall, I took the Greyhound to B.Y.U, and survived my freshman year with only a twenty pound weight gain. The following summer I worked on self-image and Betty made wedding plans. (She’d been caught by the most eligible bachelor in the ward and wasn’t writing missionaries any more.) In January after a summer and a semester of working in D.C., I was finally ready for another try at B.Y.U. This time arriving by train. Everything new and improved. I was going to be social, friendly, involved, all that.

It had been a month. I wasn’t discouraged yet. The phone rang. It was for me.

“I’m Ken Babcock. You probably don’t know who I am, but...”

“Oh, yes I do,” I interrupted (contradicting him for the first time). I never forget hypothetical husbands.

“Will you go to a play with me on Friday, Twelfth Night?”

“I’d love to.” (On Valentine’s Day. A date. A boy asking me out on Valentine’s Day. A play. A date. Me. He must not have a girl friend.) My roommate thought he did though. She said her name was Bea Goff. She showed me her picture in the yearbook. Cute girl - a Betty type. After that night she was an ex-girl friend though.

I made a red velvet cake, the kind with two bottles of red food coloring in it. A cake and a cupcake for Valentine’s Day. The cake turned out well. It might have been heart shaped even. But too much to give to a boy on a first date. I frosted the cupcake for Ken. Just as well, that much red dye could have put him over the edge. I gave the cake to a couple of my boy cousins and their roommates. I didn’t know them very well but they were safe and appreciative. .

He called and said he would be late. Would I meet him on the corner. By a fire hydrant, there where the creek goes under the road out of, or into, Heritage Halls. It must have been dark. Cold enough for a coat. My green coat. I wasn’t happy standing there. Cars would drive by and slow down. A guy would look me over and drive on. ‘Some way to check out a blind date I thought. Unfair.’ He didn’t say how late. I stood there, a study in insecurity.

I looked at the trees instead of the cars slowing, looking me over, passing by. The branches were dark, bare, thick, dark and wet maybe, turning upward. framing the sky. A star through the branches. The star made me more hopeful than the passing cars. I didn’t want to look for him any more. Even though the driver or passenger in a car is sitting, he is in a power position, looking down on mere flesh compelled to stand unenthroned on bare sidewalk, psychologically disadvantaged, naked, exposed. I didn’t want him to drive up, look out the window and . . . . .

Suddenly, he was walking toward me. He had parked the car before the curve. He came up to me, smiling, apologizing, gracious. I didn’t walk away. If he had driven up, I would have wanted to.

I think he had trouble with the windshield wipers - or the defrost. It was a boat of a car. I don’t think it was snowing. You could park on campus in those days. We got as close as we could and walked fast. I liked the way he took my arm. Confident. The play hadn’t started. We watched. I don’t think he held my hand. I could hear him next to me. Feel him next to me. I remember looking at the costumes. (I would never forget Twelfth Night - because I kept the program and could look it up.) He would forget the name of the play. Sometimes he remembered it as “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but he would retain a romantic inclination to take me to Shakespearean productions. He told him later how impressed I was that he laughed in all the right places.

He was thin. Taller than I was. Not too tall, but he walked like he had long legs. Beautiful dark brown eyes, moist and shining from contacts lenses. Eyebrows. Good ears. A nice shaped head with medium brown fuzz, shorter than the flattop in the picture. Still cute. An I-could-hardly-believe-how-cute cute, not scarey cute but comfortable. Clean fine features. Good nose. A dimple in the middle of his chin.

We must have talked after the play. I remember us sitting in the car. He was asking me questions. I didn’t know then that he was going through his list of qualifications. But I didn’t like the microscope. “I’m not going to tell you any more about me,” I said, “Until you tell me about you.” He did. We talked for a while then realized we hadn’t covered the typical “What’s your major?” questions. I was elated that he could think and talk ideas. I didn’t have to worry about playing dumb.

It must have been cold, though. We decided to go back to the dorm and talk in the common room. We had our backs to the window. Looking toward the fireplace. We were on a sofa, not too close. I got up to get the cupcake and a napkin. I must have left it in my bedroom. If it had been in the kitchen one of my roommates would have eaten it.

He brought out a valentine with a poem on it. It had one of those tissue paper fold out hearts with the accordian diamonds, pink. You could look through the heart to a bouquet of red roses, framed by gold ivy and swirls with a red border. The poem:

TO MY UNKNOWN QUEEN (“my” corrected from “the”)

BEHOLD HOW NOBLE VENUS ‘MIDST THE GLOOM,
VAST EMPTINESS, AND SPACE DOTH RADIATE
SOFT BLUISH GLEAMS UNLIKE THE BLANCHED MOON
WHOSE WASTED FACE GLOWS NOT WITH LOVE, BUT HATE.

THUS IS A UNIVERSE OF SOULS MADE WARM
BY THEE WHOSE FACE BESPEAKS A GENTLER LOVE,
ROSE-FRAGRANCE MOUNTING VICTOR OVER THORNS,
DIFFUSED FROM THY PURE HEART BY GOD ABOVE

With Love Eternal,
Ken


I don’t think he meant to give it to me. He had been writing it because it was Valentine’s Day and because he is romantic. It had made him late. The process of pondering, creating, polishing, perfecting. He couldn’t stop until he had it right - a poem about the perfect woman he would marry someday. He ate the cupcake. I read the poem. Maybe he was glad I could cook. I was glad he could write poetry. I knew I wasn’t any unknown queen but I didn’t care. I was happy. We were happy. It would take a long time for me to be convinced that he knew who and what I really was, imperfect, not quite queenly. And, it would take a little while for him to learn to love me and for me to love him . But it was a beginning.

*** Miss Jane Carlson, 580 So. Alcott St., Denver 19, Colorado, E.U..A. He sent four pages, typed, in Spanish, except for two notes: “This is what we have now. K.B.” and “This is where we need help most.” plus a half-page enthusiastic explanation in English.
Dear Jane, I have a problem, and I think that you can help me. Our youth missionary program hasn’t caught fire. We need ideas like mad for our district - not only on how to help the members of our Missionary Committee to get animated, but also ideas for special investigator activities. From what Margie tells me, it sounds like you’re having a lot of success in both of these fields - and success is what we are determined to have. Please send me as many car-loads of stuff as you can get together; and if you have any friends with good ideas, please ask them to write me too. The Hermosillo District is going to have the most animated youth in the whole mission! Signed: Tu consiervo y amigo vicario, Elder Babcock. The date was April 22, 1962.
(I don’t know if I knew then that Margie was his sister. Maybe she talked to Betty or maybe he was confused and it was Betty who had written to him that I was the head of the Youth Missionary Committee.)

Some of what I’ve learned about his side of the story:

Ken Babcock and Craig Kirkham were Helaman Hall roommates, freshmen. They started a contest with a couple of U.S. maps and a colored pencil. Whenever one of them got a date with a girl from a new state, he could color it in. Ken was ahead when they decided it wasn’t a very ethical way to approach dating.

It was Delbert Phillips who introduced Ken and Craig to Betty and LoLeta. Del was a brilliant student, but had Cerebral Palsy. He was quite spastic and confined to a wheelchair. He needed readers to help with homework and lab assignments. Betty must have volunteered. She probably met Del in one of her math or science classes. Betty was good in math and science (a reason for me to avoid both subjects).

Soon Craig was dating Betty, and Ken was dating her roommate LoLeta. Craig even went to Denver with Betty for Thanksgiving to visit her family. When he returned to B.Y.U, and talked about his trip, he told Ken that Betty had a crazy younger sister who stuck her feet out the station wagon window (all the way back to Denver from Red Rocks, a park in the foothills).

That was me. I had definitely been flirting with Craig, determined to convince him that I was more fun than Betty. I think he liked her more than she liked him. He definitely liked her more than he liked me. But Craig hadn’t been on a mission yet and Betty didn’t believe in serious relationships with “Premies.”

Craig told Ken they had agreed to cool things down. And, unsophisticated in the hazzards of dating roommates, Ken figured Betty was free game. He and LoLeta had already decided to just be friends, and Betty seemed more his type. He invited them both to a basketball game, sitting next to LoLeta. He passed a note to Betty behind LoLeta’s back asking her out on a date. She nodded yes, with LoLeta none the wiser (for the moment).

They only went out once, but they talked for a long time afterwards. Ken was impressed with Betty’s family, in spite of the flirty younger sister. Betty showed him a family picture. He found out that they read Book of Mormon at dinner time and had family prayer. He liked that.

In March Ken left for the West Mexican Mission. It was for two and a half years in those days.. When he had been out a year, LoLeta was called to the same mission! Ken called the mission president about it, so they were kept in different cities. Betty was the girl Ken wrote to. He told her she was the kind of girl he wanted to come home to. He didn’t keep a copy of the dear John, but he did keep a copy of the letter from her flirty younger sister. And, he remembered her name.

Ken returned to BYU in September of 1963, ready to date. He was a Returned Missionary now and knew it. He had a busy six months, dating a lot of girls. But he didn’t use a map. He now had a mental list of qualifications. Bea Goff came close, but he was still looking.

Ken’s friendship with Del Phillips still provided connection with girls. Del had graduated in chemistry and education but decided to stay at BYU and work on a law degree when they wouldn’t let him student teach. One of Betty’s old roommates was still reading for Del. She’s not important to the story except that she needed a ride to Salt Lake and Del recruited Ken. They were going to visit the girls’s former roommate, Phyllis Quist, who also happened to be one of Betty’s cousins.

The girls were talking about old times and people. Betty was married, living in Virginia. And, then Ken heard Phyllis say,

“Jane Carlson is back at B.Y.U.”

“The younger sister?” Ken interrupted, “Do you have her phone number?”

It was almost Valentine’s day. He didn’t think she would remember writing to him. But, he determined to ask her for a date on Valentine’s Day. He called.

The time got away from him though, when the day came. He had been writing a poem. He wasn’t writing the poem for Jane. He was just doing the Romeo thing, being romantic for the sake of romance. But, he was just glad it turned out well. “It just felt right to give it to you” he said, “a kind of miracle.”

Written March 25, 1998 and found by Ken on January 20, 2010 while he was cleaning out his closet. He wanted me to send it to my children without further editing. I still had it on the computer, so here it is.