Happy 66th Anniversary, Mom and Dad

First, this is what I wrote last year for their 65th.

Today, October 23rd, 2006, was my parents' 65th wedding anniversary.

I told the students in one of my classes. One kid said "Wow. That's longer than I've been alive." Duh.

My mom and dad are two tough people. They endured WWII, mostly apart, ran a farm for 40 years together until my dad retired at 62. Raised 4 kids on the humble earnings of an independent crop farmer. Dealt with a long recovery from a knee replacement, skin cancer, diabetes, bad crops, hard times, and currently are fighting the battle with my dad's Alzheimers. But they have one of the most obvious loves I've ever seen. My dad doesn't have many jokes left in his memory. Doesn't know when he's repeating himself. But he still likes to say, after all these years "It's a trial marriage."

They still hold hands every day, must have their quota of snuggle time every night during the local news, and still, even in their compromised physical conditions, I'm certain, would fight to the death to defend the other.

Among my favorite memories of my parents:

Late 1960s, early 1970s. My dad usually came home from the field for lunch. Filthy, sweaty, his overalls layered in dust from being on a tractor all morning. He pulled into the gravel driveway on his tractor, his radio blaring the country music station. (The only local station we had.) I remember Freddie Fender's "Before the Last Teardrop Falls" and Charlie Rich's "Did You Happen to See the Most Beautiful Girl in the World." (He hated rock and roll. Called it "whangy-dang music.") We could actually hear the radio from a quarter mile away, because he had to have it so loud to hear it above the tractor. Mom went outside where he was standing on the patio, waiting. She picked up her broom and started beating him with it. Big yellowy brown dust clouds flew off of him, and until she had beaten him to her satisfaction, he couldn't come inside.

They were playful, her swats with the broom getting a bit slapstick, him often saying "That's a little too hard, honey."

For lunch, his favorite meal was Campbell's tomato soup, a grilled cheese sandwich, a pickle, and white whole milk with Hershey's syrup mixed in. I remember the clanging of his spoon against the glass. Lunch (which is called "dinner" on the farm) started promptly at noon, so Dad could watch the mid-day grain report on TV. You did not want to make noise during this moment.

On days when he was too far behind in the field to come home for lunch, Mom and I took it to him. I got the job of holding the freezing cold 16 ounce bottle of Pepsi with the plastic cup turned upside down on top, and the opener. This was the highlight of my day. I had no one else around on the farm. Mom and I would try to guess whether, when we got to the field, Dad would be going away from us or coming toward us on the tractor. The wait was longer when he was going the other way. He got off the tractor, pulled his red bandana out of his back overalls pocket, wiped his face, then sat down in the shade of a tree. Mom unpacked his sandwich and a little ziploc bag of chips, and something sweet like a Twinkie or a cupcake, and I handed him the Pepsi and the cup and the opener. I watched him eat and I watched Mom watch him eat.

20 minutes later, he got back on the tractor and worked until dark. Usually a 14 or 15 hour day in the field, if the weather held.

Oh, I forgot. When he came home for lunch, he'd take what today would be called a "power nap." Too dirty to get onto a bed, he laid on the living room floor, flat on his back, and my dog Nicky, the size of a loaf of bread, curled into the bend of Dad's elbow and slept soundly with him.

He does still remember Nicky.


One year later, my mom's love for my dad has turned even more fierce. Now 89, he has become markedly more frail. We bought a walker for him when I was home 2 weeks ago, but he can't handle it very well. He struggles even to shuffle, and his Alzheimers has eaten up more of his personality. At about 5 or 6 p.m. each day, he asks my mom if he can go to bed. No, she says. Wait a while.

There are endless pills to deal with. He must be taken care of in many ways, and my mother is worn out. But she has made it pointedly clear that she will not put him into a nursing home until she absolutely has to. She will not do this to the love of her life. If not for my sister living 5 blocks away, this current situation would be bordering on impossible. God bless my sister.

I always longed for a happy marriage. And now that I have found one, I am sometimes wistful that Scott and I didn't meet until our late 40s. But then, it could've been our late 60s, or not at all. So I'm grateful. Wildly so.

Watching my parents, I also have realized just how fast 66 years could go by.

My dad still tells her "Kathleen, you're beautiful" a dozen times a day. He has always, always done this. She puts her hand on his face as she walks past his recliner and says "You're a sweet boy."

Social contact makes my father very quiet. He is aware on some level that he can't hold a conversation like he used to. Up until he entered the shadowy hallway of this disease, he would gather new friends everywhere he went. If we flew somewhere on vacation, he knew a dozen people on the plane by the end of the flight. While waiting for my mom to shop at the mall, he'd sit on a bench and make 2 or 3 more new friends, introducing them to each other.

My favorite of his lines is one he used repeatedly back when he and my mom would spend a couple months in Florida during the winters. While standing in line at a restaurant or store, he'd ask the retiree next to him "Where up North are you from?" About 80% of the people at the places they frequented were snowbirds, so it was a safe line. But people looked shocked sometimes. How did he know?

The best he does now when he sees someone he knows is to answer the question "How are you?" with "Oh, never been better at this age."

Both of my parents walked me down the aisle 4 months ago today. I locked my arm tightly into Dad's so he wouldn't fall. The wedding was lost to him an hour after it happened. He doesn't remember that I'm married. When I was there visiting 2 weeks ago, he asked me 100 times a day "Where do you call home?" And I answered. 100 times. And I would sometimes pick up the little laminated map of the U.S. with Phoenix circled, and "Candy lives here" written next to it, and show him again. But it just doesn't "stick."

"Where do you call home?" I found it interesting that he phrased it this way.

It is clear where he calls home. Anywhere she is.