What Princeton Did to My Husband – by Solveig Lucia Gold
And then out we walked through FitzRandolph Gate in June of 2017. The gate marks the divide between the town of Princeton and Princeton campus, and students walk through it only twice: at the start of their freshman year, to mark the beginning of their time as Princeton students, and at Commencement, to mark the end. Because I was one of the seniors chosen to sing Old Nassau at Commencement, I was onstage for the ceremony alongside the faculty. As we peeled off to march two by two down the aisle and out the gate, I was serendipitously joined from across the stage by Joshua. We laughed and took a selfie. God s sense of humor, I guess.
I flew off to England for an MPhil in Classics. I was in love with a boy in California, had lingering feelings for a boy in New York, and was nonetheless eagerly dating Englishmen and Germans at Cambridge. In the midst of it all, I sent Joshua an old article: Cambridge Classics Professor Mary Beard on the subject of the erotics of pedagogy. What did he make of it?
The conversation between us changed. He wrote me a letter. We met in Paris. And the rest, as they say, is history.
My now-97-year-old grandmother, who lived just a few blocks from Joshua in Princeton, was the first to suspect a spark: After my grandfather s death, Joshua began to pay her regular visits, and she decided that if we weren t dating already, she would try to set us up. My parents and friends were cautiously supportive and not remotely surprised that I d fallen for an older man. As my mother said, No relationship is perfect. If your biggest problem is a 25-year age gap, you re doing pretty well.