Category Archives: Family and Friends

Family and Friends

Journey After Happily Ever After

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[I read the following at the 50th wedding anniversary celebration for my parents, Sunday, December 18th, 2016.]

The story of how my parents met became mythological in its proportions to me after growing up hearing the story told many, many times during my childhood. It goes something like this:

They met at a statewide church camp when my dad was sixteen and my mom was – as she puts it – a mature 13 and three-quarters. They lived 100 miles apart, my dad in Fort Lupton, Colorado, a small town north of Denver, and my mom in Pueblo, a former steel town south of Denver. After meeting and becoming smitten with each other, they corresponded by mail for about a year. Wanting to see each other again, my dad drove to Pueblo with a friend of his and took my mom and a friend of hers to the Colorado State Fair. At that point, things took a turn for the worse. As the story goes, my dad told “the joke” – which so offended my mom and her friend that the rest of the time at the fair was spent with the pairs segregated not by couple, but by their sex. The drive home was tense with the two boys in the front seat and the two girls in the back seat. So tense, that at some point, my dad pulled over and threatened to make the girls walk home from there. His friend made him reconsider and the girls were taken safely home.

If you’re wondering what the joke was, it went something like this:

“What did Adam say to Eve? Eve, I wish you’d stop using my pants for the salad.”

From there, the story goes that they did not speak for three years. Three. Years. Now, during that time, my dad kept in contact with my mom’s older sister, writing letters occasionally to each other. At some point, my aunt suggested to both that they talk, and when they did, their romance was rekindled. A year or so after that, they married, at the ages of 19 and 21. As the story goes, they were so impatient to marry that instead of waiting until my dad graduated from college later that spring, they would marry during the Christmas break between the semesters of his last year. And so, they were married at my mom’s home church in Pueblo, on December 23rd. Their honeymoon consisted of a short road trip in the snow-laden mountains of Colorado, ending in time to get my dad back to classes for his last semester of college.

And they lived happily ever after.

If you’re finding that statement ridiculous, then A) you know that they’ve now been married 50 years and much has happened since, and B) you know that there’s no such thing. Marriage is compromise. Marriage is sacrifice. Marriage is work.

They would probably agree that at the time, they were both naive of these facts and that their marriage was just the beginning of discovering their personality differences, discovering their differences in upbringing, of discovering each other, and how these discoveries would impact the discovery of themselves.

When I first saw the musical “Into the Woods” by Stephen Sondheim, I loved the concept that it was a two act musical, mashing up several fairy tales, where the endings that we’re all familiar with, the “happily ever after” endings, came at the end of the first act. I remember spending all of intermission excitedly, and nervously, wondering what would come next – what would come after “happily ever after.”

There are many events that came next for my parents:

A decision to go into the ministry.

A move to the cold of Minneapolis, Minnesota for Bible college.

A move to the cold of Gunnison, Colorado to become the pastor of a small, mountain town church.

The birth of their first and only child.

A decision to become missionaries.

A move to Brussels, Belgium awaiting a decision for mission placement.

A move to Jerusalem, Israel – a life-changing experience. An experience so profound that their world view, their view of humanity, their view of home and everything they knew, shifted.

A need for a break.

A homecoming.

A decision to leave the ministry.

Building a life in Colorado with careers in engineering and high tech.

Building a life in California.

Retiring.

Living happily every after, again.

These broad strokes explain little of how they got from the wedding ceremony to happily ever after. I can tell you it wasn’t easily done. They will be embarrassed for me to share this memory where a fight of theirs got so loud and lasted so long, that my conflict avoiding, grade-school aged self decided that the only way to deal with the situation was to hide in the linen closet of the bathroom – putting two doors between me and their argument.

As an adult, I better understand, and deeply admire, their journey together.

Several years ago now, there was a television show my parents and I began to watch. It was a British show called “As Time Goes By”. It’s the story of a couple who, after being separated for 38 years, re-discover each other and fall in love all over again. While the story of how these characters meet again after so many years and rekindle their love is sweet, I resonate most with the interactions of the couple and how they treat each other. I see my parent’s relationship reflected in their story:

Their personalities are different, almost, seemingly, incompatible. But the result is that they complement each other, filling inadequacies of one with the strengths of the other. They recognize each other’s weaknesses and help the other compensate when they are feeling lost and inadequate. They celebrate the other’s strengths and encourage each other’s growth, even when that growth seems scary or isn’t fully understood. They sacrifice for each other, equally. They communicate, especially when it’s difficult to say. They laugh with, and occasionally at, themselves, finding humor in difficult moments. And when those difficult moments come, they face them and speak truth to them until they are no longer difficult. They challenge each other when the irrational moment springs from the trivial and support each other when it comes from the wounds of the past. They acknowledge when they’re wrong. They apologize. They listen.

Combining these traits with the wisdom of many years, there is a sweetness of interaction that is a delight to observe, and something that I not only admire but aspire to in my own relationship.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

Family and Friends

Siblings

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Growing up, I remember a time when I was endlessly pestering my parents for a sibling. I wanted a younger brother or sister so badly. Although I can now look back and say that it was mostly so that I could have a playmate that was always there when I wanted to play. At the time, my parents and I were living in Israel, and my parents, though free with their attentions toward me, were nonetheless often busy with classes or working, and the neighborhood kids weren’t always around. But at that naive age, I didn’t realize that a brother or sister wouldn’t always want to do something with you – or do what you wanted them to do.

I learned this a few years later, after we moved back to the same town as my mom’s sister. I found I didn’t always want to do what my older cousin wanted me to do – like dress her younger sister (who was my age) and me in fancy clothes and make us dance.

And still later, when my mom went back to work and I spent time in the care of the neighbor down the street with her two daughters or in the care of my aunt and her two daughters, I began to really see what daily living with siblings could be like: often fun, but riddled with conflict, negotiations, and sometimes tears. I began to appreciate being able to go home to the always wagging tail of my cocker spaniel.

In years to come, however, I would realize that I got as close to having siblings as an only child could get through not only these two pairs of sisters, but through my many cousins.

Siblings share a closeness in part because only they understand “the family” in a way that no one outside could understand. Siblings know a history and sequence of events that make up your story in a way that anyone coming in at a later chapter must often work very hard to understand. Siblings are your first peers, your first mentors, your first pupils, and your first charges.

For all those things, I had cousins. With nine aunts and uncles from both sides of my family, I had 19 first cousins, some of whose kids I was actually closer to in age than their parents, so the number of cousins is substantial. While we may not have shared parents, we shared a certain history and knowledge of each other’s lives that few others could understand. In this life, there are many reasons that we choose people we meet to become our family and I have many friends that I count as family. But I have been blessed by a wealth of family that I also consider friends, and in particular, I have been blessed by cousins that are siblings to me. And I am grateful.

Family and Friends

Places I’ve Lived

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It’s always a bit strange saying goodbye to a place, especially one in which you’ve lived and that you’ve called home. Strange because when you no longer go there, the place isn’t really what you’ll miss. In part, you’ll miss making new memories in that comfortable place. But on the whole, it’s the loss of the use of that place as an easy touchstone for old and cherished memories that makes parting bittersweet. 

Places hold power for us because they become imbued with the actions, and the intentions behind those actions, that take place in them. At home, the dinners, the games, the celebrations, the grief, the arguments and the love intertwine in the daily actions between family, friends, and spouse.

Today I said goodbye to the home my parents have made for the last 23 years. It was not my childhood home, but I did share it with them for a couple of summers between years at college and then for a few years when I later got another degree. It is also the place that my parents have lived for the longest period — so far.

It is the home that introduced neighbors to us that are now life-long family friends. It is the home where I held my childhood dog for the last time. It is the home they opened to a cousin and later an uncle when both came upon hard times. It is the home with grand 50th birthday celebrations, one “Over the Hill” for him and one “English Garden Tea” for her, that filled its walls beyond their capacities for people, laughter and fun. It is the home that helped us repair our relationship after the strains of coming out. It is the home that held us as our understanding of each other grew — where mentor / adult supplanted parent / child.

But I must remind my nostalgic self that it was not the home that did all of that, it was those who built it: my mom and my dad, together with dear family and precious friends, gathered in relationship, fun and love. So, I take this moment to recognize this transition from the familiar to the new, and in acknowledging the loss of the touchstone, I revel in the thought of imbuing the new with all that love.