In this reminiscence, 84 year old Chaz Borneman sums up his life with his wife Irene by saying, “the experience of falling in love and being in love and living in love and still today growing old in love had become for me an ethereal experience.”

 

But the reader of “When Love Shaped Us” would never imagine this outcome in the first chapter. Chaz’ cousin Cari has to badger him to ask out their mutual friend Irene.

 

The ancient Chaz is telling selected stories from his high school days in 1943-44 to de-mythologize his reputation. But by the end of that first chapter he sees an Army Air Corp plane crash taking off, succumbs to Cari’s goading, and asks Irene out to the movies.