53 Years, Remembering!

Proud parents of the groom.  Ben and Kristen's wedding 2008

                             
              Historical John Wesley Love home in Jacksonville, our home 1981-1982

Another anniversary

Retirement for Joe after 52 years in the oil industry

Recipe box Joe made for me our first Christmas 1964, Corvallis, Oregon

Our 3 little boys and their Gingerbread House 1973

Faith, always.

Reminders of our life in Jakarta, Indonesia (at my talk to the children at Shady Oak Christian School)

Angel and Bella

Our antique rose in the garden on Greenhaven. Getting ready to plant some here.

Tickets from so many performances, games, concerts.

Our wedding group.  December 28, 1963

Happy!

Our mission statement for our Sugar Land house, working on one for our home with B&K in Richmond.

Homeward Bound.  A magnolia leaf.

Joe and me as Jacob and Rachel, innkeepers for so many years in Experiencing Christmas, FBC Richmond.

Snowflakes we cut for our first Christmas tree in Oregon.

So many happy times in the porch swing together and with our granddaughters.

Today is our 53rd wedding anniversary.  Last night and this morning we mused and remembered all those years ago and the beginning.  Things like what we did the evening before our wedding day (Joe and his best man went to a movie - Spencer's Mountain.  I only remember being at home, tweaking the decorations I made to top our wedding cake, trying on my wedding dress and working out last minute fitting details such as pinning a tea towel around my waist to hold up the heavy train and keep it from sagging!)  It was a happy and exciting time, but I do not remember feeling stressed.

Today, many lovely weddings are planned at least a year in advance, with many decisions and projects involved.  The stress, as well as the cost, can rise to uncomfortable levels.  Someone asked me just this week about the issues involved with having a Christmastime wedding, with so many other things on the calendar, and subsequent years when the anniversary might be eclipsed in all the Christmas celebration. It is true, our anniversary falls 3 days after Christmas and our celebrations have not been lavish (other than the beautiful 50th-anniversary dinner given to us by our family) - but I would not change anything.  I love Christmas - the meaning, the music, the colors, the family gathering. That translates so very well into the marriage celebration.  We decided to have our wedding in October, only a little over 2 months before it happened!  We chose to keep costs to a minimum and meaning to maximum. I made my wedding gown, sewing in between studying for nursing finals, and bringing the last pearls to sew on the lace train for Mother to help. I laugh when I tell you I crafted my pillbox (a la Jacquelyn Kennedy) hat that held my veil from the end of an Oatmeal box, covered in satin and pearls and made a puffy muff to hold my small bouquet.  Bridesmaids wore cranberry faille coat dresses with white organdy collars and carried a single candle with a tiny nosegay of white flowers. We used a bank of green magnolia leaves from a wedding held the day before instead of flower arrangements in the church, and our reception was in the fellowship hall where punch, cake, nuts, and buttermints were on the table. We had no honeymoon, choosing instead to drive back to Oklahoma City in a snow storm the day after a night in a motel in Dallas. We had school for me and a job hunt for Joe to get back to. And it was thrilling and wonderful and the most beautiful time and place and way to get married.

Yes, it makes me smile to think of the beginning, but oh, the memories all through these years.   This is what makes me weep and smile at the same time. The years have brought so much happiness and fullness. Faith, yes. fLove, yes. Friendship, yes. Hard work, yes.  Sad times, yes.  Laughter, oh yes. Three of the finest sons any parents could possibly have. And now the women they chose who are our daughters. Grandchildren, and more love. Pride, yes. Loss, yes.  Stretching, yes.  Tragedy and pain, yes, that too.  Perseverance, without doubt.  Glorious joy, yes.  Contentment, yes. Illness, yes.  Hope, then, and now.

I chose a few random photos that are markers for me of a life and work together, of love.

October

I think alot about my mother in October.  October 20 is the day we always celebrated her birthday, and I still do, although in different ways, since her death just over 8 Octobers ago.  She went home (her phrase) on September 21, 2006, one day short of a month before her 93rd birthday. I miss her still, but softer, gentler memories than grief color my thoughts when I turn the calendar this month. For Mother's Day the first year after I left home, I mailed her a postcard with a poem every day for a week before. I was in college, short in funds but long on words, and prompted by a longing to let her know how much I loved her and appreciated all she did for me.  As years passed and the physical distance between us grew (as far as the almost 11 ,000 miles between East Texas and the island of Java in the late 80's), she maintained her loving encouragement with long chatty letters filled with clippings and recipes. At the end of her life, when Alzheimer's had blotted out so much of her ability to communicate, she still told me she loved me, and, fearful that she would not remember to say so, she dotted her counters and space with yellow sticky notes telling me so.

Long before that, one of her letters to me contained this folded article. Unless you have a touch screen display that allows you to enlarge,the above photo is not of the quality that allows reading of the piece by Marya Saunders that appeared in The Tyler Morning News Sunday edition May 14,1961, but you will be able to see Mother's lovely, even handwriting, telling me "I Love You Darling, and Thank God for you, Mother."  And of course her ever practical pointing out, "This was in Tyler Paper yesterday."

So I echo the author's subtitle.  Neither time nor death has stilled this message from a mother to her daughter. 

Wrapped in Love, Covered with Grace

As Nora nears 6 months of growing and changing and exploring her world, we celebrate the gift she is to us and are grateful.  One day, after I rocked her to sleep and laid her in her crib, I saw the coverlet I made for her hanging nearby and covered her gently with it. In previous posts, I told the story of the lace which I knitted for edging. I made a short piece of the lace when I was pregnant with Nora's Daddy, Ben. Forty years passed before I pulled the lace out and began again.  The story is explained in these two blog posts.

www.tinyurl.com/BeginningAgainForNora

www.tinyurl.com/Nora-sLace

I stood and watched her, smoothing the satin and fingering the tiny knitted stitches. I thought about how fast she is growing and prayed she will always know she is wrapped in love, covered in Grace. 

For Me!

After I started elementary school in Jacksonville, TX in 1945, I never took my lunch to school because our house was on the same block as West Side School so I walked home almost every day for lunch.  Rarely I was given a quarter to buy my lunch at school which I considered a nice, if infrequent, treat!  If by chance I needed a sack lunch for something, it was just that - a waxed paper wrapped sandwich in a small brown paper sack.

When our sons started their years in Davis Elementary School in Plano, TX in the 1970's, lunch room prices had increased considerably, and most of the time they still had homemade lunches. They just carried them to school in cartoon character or superhero embellished metal  lunch boxes which had their names marked with indelible markers. Since plastic sandwich bags had been introduced in the late 1950's, their sandwiches most often were snugly enclosed in a baggie (no zipper on top), a Ziploc bag, or Tupperware!  If I stopped to do the math X 3 boys for making sandwiches, bagging them and assembling said sandwich, some fruit, chips, and a cookie or three into the corners of those rattly dented lunch boxes, it might make me feel tired, so I will just propose that over those years that happened thousands of times.  Often I tucked a note inside to send a little love along with lunch. I am pretty sure by first grade they did not let their friends see those notes.

In May, I started going to our youngest son's home to take care of my newest granddaughter. Her other grandma and I are sharing time, so I go every third week for my days with Nora, now 4 months old.  On the first Monday, I arrived at 6:00 a.m. to give them time for departure for their jobs by 6:15.  As they kissed their little one goodbye, picked up their things and started to leave, Ben turned around and said.  "Oh, Mom...I made your sandwich for lunch.  It is in the frig." As my eyes filled with tears and memories, I gave him a hug and thanked him before holding his daughter a little closer and breathing her sweet baby scent.

I am keeping that sandwich bag.

Together Again

On January 26, I posted a story titled "Returned Mail"  about a lovely Southern lady named Charlotte who died last year at the age of 98. Last week, her husband died and on February 14,  Paul Parker was buried. They were married for 73 years! When couples who have lived and loved for a very long time die, it often happens that when one of them passes away, the other soon follows.  I am remembering my own paternal grandparents, Tom and Ida Teal,  who died within a week of each other when I was 17.  I like to think that Charlotte was waiting for Paul -  that they are together again. Their love story lives on as we remember them.

www.tinyurl.com/PaulParkerObituary