The Magical Mystery Date

I’ve dated the same man for thirty two years.  Some would say that’s remarkable for the staying power alone, but it’s not really.  You see, we’ve been married for thirty of those years.  That is the remarkable part. 

Last week at work, an appointment for this past Thursday popped up in my Outlook calendar.  The subject line read “Mystery Date.” The invite was from my husband.  My heart skipped a beat and I hit accept.  

“Mystery date?” I asked that evening over dinner.  He smiled, nodded his head.  “Hmm,” he murmured. The only other information I got out of him was “casual clothing, launch time 9:30 am”.

Our mystery dates have become a highlight in our gallery of dates.  Why still court each other? Because we’re not the same people who were friends for seven years before we began dating.  We’re not the same as when we got married, established our home, or raised our son. 
Over the years, dates have run the gamut from a simple drive around the island when Abe was a baby, to pizza dinners by the river, to author talks, a run through the car wash followed by a trip for ice cream, to classic car shows and to full-blown formal nights out for dinner and a concert.  The constant?  It’s just the two of us.

So what was Thursday’s Mystery Date?  One of the best EVER! We hit the road at 9:30, stopped for breakfast at a local diner and were on our way.  A relaxing hour and a half drive later along the water on Route 5 took us to our destination, the Chautauqua Institution.  You could easily spend a week or more there, but we made the most of our day trip. 

Steve picked out two events I fell in love with.  First, we enjoyed two of the seven finalists in the 18^th Chautauqua Piano Competition Finals.   The young woman and gentleman we saw were stellar performers.  Their 25-minute solos provided two completely different styles in the pieces they chose.  We left them to have a bite to eat before heading over to the Hall of Philosophy, a huge outdoor Greek style pavilion to hear author Margaret Atwood speak on The Handmaid’s Tale.  She talked about her writing process and influences on the plot lines.  Topics ranged from the choice of dress for characters to the setting of a totalitarian society.  The couple hundred people gathered were enthralled with her stories and personal experiences.  For this writer (and Atwood fan), it was a huge treat.  

Why bother planning these for each other?  For the simplest of reasons.  It’s wonderful to plan something for the other that caters to an interest (like writing for me or classic cars for Steve).  Dates give us time to reconnect and center attention back on each other, away from jobs, commitments, family and hobbies.   Sometimes they’re just a whole lot of fun and laughter.  

The point is in taking the time to plan, to invite, to participate and appreciate.  Something I look forward to for many dates…and years, to come.  

30 Years of Love, Honor and Cherish

In love and naïve, we stood at the altar March 19, 1983 and promised to love, honor and cherish each other.  At 20 and 21½ years old, we had no idea where those promises would lead us, only that we were committed to being together.  On Tuesday, we’ll pause to celebrate and reminisce over some of the highs and lows those promises carried us through these last thirty years.  Then on Wednesday, we’ll head into the next thirty, with the same promises, still in love, albeit a little older and wiser.    

Steve and I moved straight from our parent’s homes to our home together.  Some would say that not having that individual time of being on our own wasn’t good, but for us, it worked.  We learned early and fast how to be flexible with each other and laid the groundwork ~ in compromise and laughter. It’s been the foundation of our relationship and how we’ve approached everything, from our finances to our social life to parenting.   

We’ve been blessed - there’s been a lot of joy and laughter.  I mean lots of laughter.  Steve’s penchant for puns and dry sense of humor has carried us far.  Of course it also helps to be married to your best friend, someone you like as well as love and the one who knows you better than anyone else in the world. 

The first three decades flew by in a heartbeat. We learned what it was to be married, established our household, and became parents, settled into our careers and our community.  We lost both sets of parents and became empty nesters for a time.  On the strength of the good times, a strong foundation of teamwork, and yes, at times just sheer luck, we made it to the other side of some brutally dark times as well.  There’s nothing like coming out of a dark place to find the other standing there, realizing they helped you through it and are waiting with open arms. 

Steve supported my desire to be a stay at home mom and homemaker for the first two decades of our marriage and my lifelong quest to be a writer.  I’ve supported his career choices, his involvement in EMS and firefighting, his devotion to community service and his commitment to being a Mason.  We’ve had fun projects, successful and questionable ventures and more mystery dates than I can remember. Above all else, we’ve been truly blessed to have our son Abram, the maker of The Morgan Three, along with us on the journey for the past 24 years.    

It’s been said that a successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.  I believe you “fall” in love once, by chance.  Staying in love is a purposeful choice. It’s work through years filled with highs and lows supported by honesty, humor and commitment.   It’s a purposeful choice to remember and practice the vows to love, honor and cherish …

It’s good to pause now and again to take a look at the whole of your life in relation to the day to day living.  Thirty years seem a good marker for that.  I don’t know what March 19, 2043 has in store for us but I do see us working our way there, through the inevitable highs and lows with love, laughter and promises.

Be EXCELLENT to Each Other

I spotted this bumper sticker on a parked car as Steven and I strolled along a sidewalk in Maine last summer.  I actually stopped and took a picture of it.  Why?  It’s a good reminder.  It’s direct.  It’s simple. It’s honest.  And yes, it’s easy.  Easier than you think.

The word excellent scares people off.  They think it’s “over the top” and “highly ambitious” when really the definition is just “very good of its kind:  eminently good”.  Not so scary or unattainable in that light.

Being excellent is being mindful of the mundane, routine, everyday life most of us live and purposefully taking it up a notch.  It’s making life more enjoyable with an action for another, your tone of voice, a thoughtful task done. A please and thank you. It’s giving consideration to someone else’s point of view or situation – sometimes making a concession.  It’s in following through on your word and keeping a promise. 

So while it’s not anything over the top or highly ambitious, it is being eminently good, and being so consistently. It’s within everyone’s reach.  It costs nothing – it’s only the giving of yourself.    

You can be excellent in any relationship whether it’s with a partner, a child, a parent, a coworker, a sibling or a friend. We’re naturally excellent in the first blush of our relationships.  It’s easy when things are fresh and new.  Personalities haven’t clashed, differences in thoughts and beliefs haven’t surfaced, and often the challenges of life that tend to wear you down haven’t happened yet.  But then they do.  Months and years pass and it’s easy to hold a grudge, fall into a rut or begin to take for granted this other person who truly does mean so much to you.  You lose what being excellent to each other brings your relationship. 

Spotting that bumper sticker stopped me in my tracks.  You can’t be on a 30 year journey with someone and not stumble a time or two, which Steven and I have done.  But our past practices of embracing the little daily things we do for each other, the respect we feel for and show each other, the humor and the love, and the mindset of being a team, are what’s always brought us back on course and to the incredible place we are now.  A lifelong set of practices wrapped up in 5 little words on a bumper sticker.  Be Excellent to Each Other. 

Take a moment and think of the ones in your life who are important to you.  The ones you love. Go be excellent with them.  Be excellent to each other.  Do it now. Do it today. And every day that follows. 

Strength

(A fiction piece written for the GBE2 blog prompt)

Harry cracked a smile as his second attempt at pouring a glass of cranberry juice yielded more in the glass and less on the counter than the first one.  Damn Alma and her love of things proper.  He would have just as soon used a tumbler to have his morning juice in.  In fact, could have done so for the last three months since she passed, but he’d stayed with the damn little ones, continuing their morning tradition of juice and meds before setting the table for breakfast. 

Back in the day he could have filled a shot glass from three feet with her favorite bourbon as he whipped her up a batch of Whisky Sours or made himself a Manhattan.  But that was then.  And this was today, hopefully his last.  If he could pull it off.  He didn’t need accuracy now; just the strength to make it happen.    

94 days now he’d sat down to breakfast alone.  It was enough. He’d shopped and cooked for one, gone to church each week and tried to find a balance of space in the pew without her.  Each night, told himself to crawl into their bed, but instead, settled into his recliner, her worn green terry robe all the cover he needed.    All this with his back, growing more painful by the day, as he popped Extra Strength Tylenol like M&M’s instead of his Valium. 

He stacked the caps of three amber pill bottles on the table and dumped the light blue pills into a pile, the cutouts in the middle resembling hearts to him more than a V for Valium.  Fitting…as today he wasn’t looking for back pain relief, but the release from the pain in his heart of spending one more day without her.  270 little cut out blue hearts.  How many would it take?  How many little blue hearts to equal her one?

His index finger drew two pills from the group, one for each of them, beginning a separate pile.  That was a start.  The “dynamic duo” she always called them, and nearly every day managed to work the reference in, reinforcing their connection with those two little words.  Two more pills followed, one each for the twins lost in childbirth, the only chance God granted them at being parents.  It was a dark time for them.  For years, each carrying the shadow of the boy and girl, lost hopes and dreams their only common ground.  And yet, they made it through, with six decades passing of celebrated anniversaries.  Harry moved 6 more pills to the pile.  Certainly over a maximum daily dose for him.  Enough?  Of course not…

Her lucky number?  23.  He had a ways to go.  His finger pulled more pills over – four letters he’d written her before they were married, saved in the folds of the Psalms in her Bible.  Seven more pills to the pile, one for every year she stayed and supported him as he slipped into the grip of alcoholism – and one more for the grace she carried herself with through it all.  Damn, she’d saved his life by staying and had made each day worth living sober for since. 

The drunk driver that killed her pled guilty and would be sentenced next month.  Harry didn’t need to be there. The courts would determine the punishment and he’d been assured it would be the maximum sentence with the level of his blood alcohol and his prior DUI convictions. He wondered if the driver had an Alma in his life that would stand by him though this.  He thought of his own “rock bottom” - losing his job, Alma picking up second shifts in addition to her day job to save the house, and the worst time, the one and only time he’d struck her. She’d found the nerve at that moment to place the ultimatum of her or the bottle at his feet.  The resolve in her eyes told him she would only give him the choice once.  He moved another pill from the large pile; one more for his choice. 

That made 23.  Surely that little pile couldn’t do it?  How many more would it take?  Were there enough to cover the life they’d shared?  The picnics at sunset on the river, the walks after dinner, and the paintings he loved, five in all that she had done during her adult education nights in ’73?  How to bundle the nights of lovemaking, the tender snuggles at dawn and the naps that had led to lazy afternoons of passion? 

Tears fell, as the years flashed through his mind of dinner parties, vacations and hiking excursions.  Holidays, birthdays and days they called in sick to work together and watched black and white movies in their pajamas all day. They’d practically rebuilt the house with the renovations they’d done, learning as they went.  They’d been a good working team, a secret pride they’d carried in their relationship that they didn’t often see in friends and family around them. 

Oh, they fought, both stubborn as mules sometimes, but not counting the seven years of his alcoholism (most of which he didn’t remember), it never lasted long and through everything, they never disrespected each other.  Retirement was their reward, life at a pace they could savor.  Every evening the nightly news with discussion and a running game of backgammon after lunch that had lasted for two years, three months and 1 day, the last game being just one hour before the accident.

He picked up a handful of pills from the big pile and slowly trickled them from his palm over the little pile.  He knew there weren’t enough.  There’d never be enough to overpower what they had. 

“I don’t need to find enough strength to escape the memories Alma”, he said out load.  “I need to find just enough...to make it through one more day without you.  And I know, I know, then tomorrow morning I have to do it all over again”.     

He leaned back in the chair and winced at the back spasm.  He dried his eyes, picked up two of the Valium and tossed them back with the cranberry juice.  It had been a long morning and a nap was in order before he went to the grocery store. 

As head headed for the bedroom, he picked up her terry green robe off the back of his recliner.  He gently eased his body onto the bed, pulled her robe over him, and laid his head on her pillow, hoping for a dream of the dynamic duo. 

A Stranger's Love

Here's a little short story I wrote a few years back. 

A Stranger’s Love

             His face is serene. From the bottom of the large window that looks out onto the runway, the sunrise peeks in.  Its rays; broken by the branches of large leafed plant, lay across him at odd angles.  Sunlight settles on his face like a soft blanket and I make out long lashes that rest at the top of his cheeks.  I shift in my seat, clasp my hands in my lap, and swallow against my dry mouth.

I glance beyond him to the newsstand.  Papers and magazines fill racks next to shelves stocked with gum and toiletries and overpriced, dusty souvenirs.  In the quiet morning hour, the clerk applies her mascara as she looks into a small pocket mirror. 

My attention returns to the man.  Faded jeans mold legs that stretch out long and cross at the ankles.  A dark gray flannel shirt, tucked in, lay open at the collar, exposing a stark white undershirt beneath.  An airport identification tag is clipped to a breast pocket and the shirtsleeves are rolled back from his wrists.  His arms, folded across his chest, rise and fall in rhythm to the long, deep breaths he takes.     

           My body softens into the vinyl-cushioned chair beneath me in response to the passive invitation he offers.  In my chest, a small hollow ache forms.  I close my eyes for a moment to indulge in harmless fantasy.  The ache turns to delicate warmth that spreads out from my chest to my arms and legs.  My fingers tingle and I draw my arms tight around me.  To draw something closer or to protect myself I don’t know.   

            The speaker above announces the arriving flight and I open my eyes.  His eyes, blue as a summer sky, look directly into mine.  Surprise and confusion flicker there. I can offer no explanation.  I cannot not look away. 

My face warms as his gaze travels down the bridge of my nose, across my cheeks, resting for a moment on my lips.  It rises to my hair and I find my hand moving the hair back from my face as it follows the path of his gaze. 

            A slow smile is mirrored in his eyes.  He cocks his head to the side and raises his eyebrows slightly in both silent acknowledgment and question.  I cannot help a small nod in reply. 

            I could love this man. Maybe I already do.  Without a spoken word, I know I will not tire of his voice.  I know his touch, firm and gentle.  With a steady stare his eyes reach my soul and I feel the promise of forever. 

            Unexpected and unsought emotions that mirror my own cross his face.  Love, desire, chance, and commitment collide and duel around and between us.  He leans forward in his seat, stares across at me, elbows on his knees and hands clasped under his chin.  Impulsively I strike the same pose and our smiles deepen.  Minutes pass.  A lifetime. 

Around us, life continues.  People filter into the waiting area.  Conversations and laughter mingle in the air. 

"Daddy!"  A loud cry pierces the air from a little girl as she runs from the gateway door.  Abruptly his expression changes and he opens his arms to catch the little girl as she flings herself into the air.  A young woman follows, drops her carry-on luggage, and circles her arms around them both in a warm embrace. 

His eyes close, then open and meet mine over her shoulders.  Silently we speak.  Good-bye.  Please understand.  Good-bye.   I do.

We could have talked; could have progressed past harmless fantasy and explored an unexpected love.  But we didn't.  He has a family; a wife and daughter. 

When my flight is called I board the plane.  I smile as I settle into my seat and my thoughts travel to the end of my flight.  To a man who waits there for me.  I love this man.  I never tire of his voice.  His touch is firm and gentle.  His look reaches my soul and promises me forever.  Just as I promise him.

I lean back into the seat and wait to go home.  I know I can love more than once in my life, I just choose to live it one gift at a time.  

###

LETTERS (A-Z April Blog Challenge)

I love to write letters.  Long hand, cursive, lengthy letters.  And I love receiving them.  Only a delivery of flowers gets my heart racing more than finding a letter in the mailbox.  (The letters are rare, and the flowers rarer still which makes them all the more special!)

In elementary school I had a few teachers who started pen-pal programs, and although they all eventually petered out, I never lost the love of writing to someone and waiting for their reply.  In high school, I became good friends with an exchange student from Australia.  We were basically inseparable for the year she was here and I envisioned a lifelong pen-pal at last.  However, she moved a few times after returning to Australia and I lost the address chain.  Thirty years later, I still feel a measure of sadness of losing that tie with her. 

Just a couple of my letter binders.

My parents lived in Florida for ten years, and mom and I had a remarkable letter writing run.  They moved back to Grand Island, our letter writing stopped, but I saved all her letters in a binder.  When she and my dad passed in 2009, and I went through their things, I found all my letters to her.  They are now in the binder together, our chronological communication over ten years right there in black and white for me to read whenever I want.  There’s an intimacy to letters, sometimes even more than a conversation and I hear her voice as I reread them.  A lasting gift she never knew she was giving me.

Along with all of the letters I’d written her, I found a draft of every single letter that she wrote me.  Then I found drafts to other people and realized that she wrote drafts for basically everything she wrote – whether a letter to the editor, a note card to a friend or a full length letter.  When I compared her drafts to my letters, I found they were basically word for word to the ;etter I’d received.  Very rarely did she change anything, but it showed me how much each word meant to her and she wanted to be sure her words properly expressed what she was trying to convey. 

A few of my dad's letters.

Another binder holds 19 letters over a six week time span that my dad wrote to my mom while he was at trade school two months before they got married.  He missed her terribly and over the six weeks, poured out his heart and a young man’s desire for his beloved.  They are a tender reflection of the love and yes, passion that a child doesn’t often get to glimpse of their parents.  When I found the letters in an old hope chest I was storing for mom I sent them to her unread.  She sent them back and said she wanted me to have them and that maybe someday; they would be useful to craft into a story.  I still blush when I read my father’s writing, but am honored to be trusted with them and someday will do them justice. 

Years ago when Abram started college, I started writing him.  It’s nice to sit down and just chat away with pen and paper about how my day has been, what’s happening on the home front or share an idea I have for my writing.  So every few weeks, he gets a few pages of my thoughts and other odds and ends. And now that he’s out of college, the letters continue and probably will until I can’t write anymore.

I know the list of ways to communicate today - the internet and email and instant messaging and blogging and a handful of ways I don’t even know about I’m sure – is growing rapidly.  But for me, nothing counters the relaxation, intimacy and connection I derive from putting pen to paper. It’s basic. It’s black and white. And it’s lasting.

Love is…a Whitman’s box of chocolates.

Bought these today. A cup of tea and a chocolate sounds heavenly.

Year after year as I grew up it appeared on Valentine’s Day like clockwork – the small Whitman’s heart shaped box, with six prized chocolates nestled inside.  My passion for (and daily fix of) chocolate in some form on a daily basis most likely finds its roots in the significance of that box for me. The front was usually adorned with a Peanuts caricature with a valentine’s message about love or hugs or the coveted “Be Mine?”   Who could resist such a loving ritual from a dad?

My dad was a softie.  I mean the big teddy bear heart kind of guy who loved his family more than himself.  I didn’t doubt my dad loved me, but didn’t give it any conscious thought through my younger daughter years – I really grew into the knowledge more as an adult, but the signs were there, just waiting for me to see them.  Valentine’s Day was my first clue. 

My dad was a quiet man.  He believed his actions spoke louder than words (written or spoken) and so “I love you” didn’t cross his lips a lot in those early childhood years.  Maybe it was the generation, maybe growing up as an only child with a gruff father, maybe it was our family dynamics.  Whatever the reason, he felt the proof of his love was in the showing, not the telling.     

Dad and I - long before Whitman's.

He worked hard to support his wife and five children.  He was involved in his community and volunteered his whole life to help others.  I don’t remember him ever reading me a story, or sitting down to play a game.  But I remember him at the father/daughter dinners for Girl Scouts, at the head of the dining room table at nightly family meals and when he walked me down the aisle to marry a man who would also love me for the rest of my life.  Dad was the only one I thought to call when I had what can only be deemed as an emotional breakdown in my freshman year of high school.  He picked a hysterical me up at the flag pole in front of the school, took me home, hugged me but didn’t question me, tucked me in on the couch after giving me an orange juice (heavily laden with Vodka) and sat with me as I slept until my mom got home from work later that day to handle whatever it was that had pushed me to my breaking point. 

Oh, how I wish I still had one of those valentine boxes.  I kept many of them for years, keepers of mementos, trinkets and whatever else a young girl squirrels away.  I’m sure at some point during an emotional “rite of passage” time when I was shedding my childhood and embracing my adulthood (hear the violins? I was probably around the oh so grown up age of 14 or so) I threw out my boxes.  And sometime around then they stopped coming.  Maybe he felt they wouldn’t be appreciated anymore – maybe I inadvertently gave off some sign that I was beyond that type of expression from him. 

My Dad. William P. Wood.

In his later years, he became much more demonstrative.  He told me he loved me each time I saw him. His arms would wrap around me, pull me close and hug me with a love I felt deep into my bones.  It was like receiving a Whitman’s heart shaped box every time.  A few years before he passed, I got the courage to ask him if it was him or my mom who had bought the boxes for us girls year after year.  His answer was clear.  “Of course it was me honey, your mother didn’t know what I wanted to say to you”. 

Thanks dad. I love you too.