Getting Married

On June 11, 1955, Mother and Daddy got married at Myers Park Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC.  If they were both still alive, this would be their 57^th wedding anniversary.  They actually only made it to 33, since Daddy died in early 1989.  I don’t know that I really thought much about marriage, much less my parents’ marriage, as I was growing up, but once I was an adult, it occurred to me that they had the kind of marriage that we would all aspire to.

First of all, they loved each other.  And never stopped.  They had good times and not-so-good times, but they persevered, with love.  I often thought that their minds must have melded when they got married, for they rarely were not in sync when it came to how they would react to situations.  It was only when I was college-age and older that I did see some differences, but they were actually pretty minor.  One that struck me happened when my father was in the hospital after he’d had cancer surgery.  The nurse on duty had stopped by and was chatting up my parents about her 16-year old daughter and her decision to buy her a (used) car.  Mother pursed her lips and made a face and said “oh, we didn’t believe in buying cars for our children.”  And shook her head to put an explanation on that statement.  Daddy said “well, we might have done it for one, but then we would have had to do it for all” and looked at me.  Mother, of course, shook her head even more firmly.  But I understood what Daddy was saying.  (tee hee)  But that was rare.  They walked in lockstep, it seemed, on most everything.

Second, they respected each other.  I really never heard either one of them say anything negative about the other.  To anyone.  They supported each other and looked up to each other.  And how great is that?

I don’t know if Mother was ever worried about not getting married.  She was older, of course, than might have been the norm back in the 50’s.  She was 27 when she met Daddy, 29 when she got married.  I’m sure she must have thought that she would meet a boy in Charlotte, her home town, and get married to him, yet she traveled thousands of miles away to a tiny town near the border of West Germany and Czechoslovakia and met the love of her life there.  And he was a diamond in the rough.  Not the finished jewel she might have thought would come her way.  This was a man who grew up in a working class family without the lofty ambitions of someone that ran in Mother’s circles.  He joined the Navy out of high school, then briefly went to college – quitting before he flunked out, and then joining the Army.  Mother told him that he had to go to college and finish his degree when he got out of the Army.  After the honeymoon, they went to Ft. Hood, Texas, where Daddy was stationed, and then on to Ft. Polk, Louisiana before his tour of duty ended and he was ready to hit the books.  He went to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and did indeed get his business degree.  And he went on to get a good solid job with Southern Bell (later BellSouth) and had a solid and distinguished career until his death.

Daddy was a good provider and a good father.  Mother could not have asked for better.  He may not have been the big deal lawyer or big deal doctor that her sisters married, but he was indeed a diamond in the rough.  We had everything we needed and we had a family that was close knit and enjoyed being with each other.

Even though I actively crusaded most of my life to be the antithesis of Mother, I did hope that I might find that same kind of diamond in the rough.  I did not grow up, like a lot of my friends, wanting to be married and have a family.  I think I assumed I would get married one day, but I wasn’t particularly keen on having children, and really saw myself as a married career woman.  I only worried about marriage when my girlfriends worried about marriage.  If I was not around anyone who had angst over getting married, I didn’t dwell on it much.  As I got older, it did occur to me that maybe I wouldn’t get married and I wasn’t sure I wanted to end up as “bitter old Aunt Marian” to my future nieces and/or nephews, but, again, I wasn’t worried unless someone around me was.  My roommate at that time was pretty focused on getting married and having a family and, suggestible as I was, it did get me a little anxious.  So when I met someone who seemed like he might be that diamond in the rough, I bit.  It didn’t hurt that he was really the only man who expressed interest in a future with me.

Anyway, I got engaged and planned a wedding.  We were very different people.  He, like Daddy, had grown up in a working class family that didn’t encourage education beyond high school.  He’d gone to school for a bit, but then got married and had a son.  He had a solid job, but it wasn’t a professional job.  But there were red flags all over the place, only I chose to ignore them.  On my way out of town for the honeymoon a voice inside my head screamed “What the HELL did you just do?”  That was unsettling.  I don’t think we were ever truly happy.  I know I wasn’t.  But I hung in there, because I’d taken vows and all.  I remember my mother telling me that I should push him to go back to college, but he was not really someone you could push.  But he did go back and it led to his getting a better job.  The red flags never went away though and eventually we divorced.

I remember when I finally told my mother that we were splitting up.  I don’t know why I was so nervous about it, but I was afraid she would tell me that I needed to figure out how to make it work.  There hadn’t been divorce in our family for the most part, so it was a little hard to have to say I had failed.  Especially because I had really never told anyone how hard it was being married and how unhappy I was and how soon after the wedding I had fallen out of love.  But I told her and she looked thoughtful for a minute and then she said she was sorry and wanted to be sure I was ok.  I’m not sure why I expected her not to be supportive, but she was.  She never questioned my decision.  She just wanted me to be happy.

I don’t know that I will ever have the opportunity to get married again.  But if I did, I’d want to have the kind of marriage my parents had.  Full of love and honor and respect.  I would want someone who saw past the outside and into my soul, who could see the good in me, no matter how much I might misbehave, the way Mother and Daddy were about each other.  I was very lucky to have such good role models.

So happy anniversary, Mother and Daddy!  I love you both and still miss you every single day.

The wedding party - Jake Wade (Sara's husband), Mee Ann, Earnest Hunter (mother's cousin), Granddaddy, Mother, Daddy, Don Moore, Sara, Harvey May (mother's cousin), Hank Tschappat (Daddy's friend)