All lovers have a favorite song and singer. Ours was: "When I fall in lover it will be forever..." by Nat King Cole. Her Daddy hated that record and presented it to us when we got married. But it was a dream for that 25 year old and that 21 year old. I won't tell you which is which--but you know.
It has been 57 years since that icy night in Louisville Kentucky --with 8 inches of snow on the Ground--when we said I do.
It's been quite a ride--six churches: from Kentucky to Virginia to Kentucky again to South Carolina to Tennessee to Alabama. And that does not count the eight interims. But I dragged I have dragged her from pillar to post--and it is hard for me to believe that she has stood by me all this time. But oh, she has.
The world has changed and so have we. Yet--the old song comes back again. I can hear Nat King Cole as if it were yesterday. We've added two red heads that have both made our lives and the world a better place in their own separate ways. And from this marriage has also come two granddaughters--who are working on their own parts of making this a better world. I don't know how many dogs and cats we have had. I do know that everywhere we lived there were a wonderful cadre of people that loved us and maybe helped firm up the marriage too. Who knows.
One of my favorite descriptions of marriage comes from the fine writer, Wallace Stegner. In his book, The Spectator Bird--an old man writes of the marriage to his wife, Ruth. You can't beat what he said:
"It is something--it can be everything--to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting go on below; a fellow bird whom you can look after and find bugs and seeds for; one who will patch your bruises and straighten your ruffled feathers and mourn over your hurts when you accidentally fly into something you can't handle."
If I were to write another book I would dedicate it this way:
--Roger Lovette/ rogerlovette.blogspot.com
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