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 57th 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)
