P3
In Sickness and In Health
P3
“The greatest legacy to children is
to see and know their parents love.”
I’ll always love you as I loved your mother.
To and For...
Our Girls.
Beginnings
From Whence We Came
The End of the Beginning
Before We Began
Of Serendipity & Fate
Middlings
Take you, For my Wife...
For Richer or Poorer...
In Good Times and Bad...
Endings
In Sickness and in Health...
Until Death Do Us Part
Beginning Again
Goodbye
Beginnings
Forgetting is difficult-
Remembering- worse.
From Whence We Came
When I’m gone I wonder how friends, parents, our children and theirs will know and remember us. For many it will be a single dimension of old yellowing photos and a few things that weren’t discarded or lost. I feel obligated as a curator to record and preserve them all to assure that our lineage will know and understand us in ways beyond our DNA.
“By your fruits, you are known.” I don’t know who said this but know it’s true. In the normal course and times of your lives you will naturally wonder about the inherent character and qualities of your own off spring. Why they look, behave and feel the way they do can only be known by knowing- from whence you came. Hopefully the surviving memorabilia and these stories will help you solve some of these riddles.
I don’t claim to be a biographer but, in a stage of recovery, I am compelled to write some of the thoughts, emotions, behavior and confusion of the times, before and after, to you in ways that can’t be said well. At least not yet. The memories, the
memorializing and finally moving on are processes that cannot occur at the same time but deserve equal attention- for a while. I need to share the prior with you before starting the latter.
It’s not a complete or definitive story- just a glimpse of some important things I want you to know in this more permanent form. Much of it you’ve heard, some of it you observed but all of it deserves to be recorded- to be remembered for you and yours to come. Admittedly, it’s not a dispassionate essay nor an intentional effort to deify your mother. It just comes out that way.
It is a small collection of events and thoughts to recall, recount and record them as a part of my attempt to move on. I suppose it’s the eulogy I would’ve given if I could’ve. In that way it includes my personal feelings, editorials and embellishments that came with our license of marriage.
Importantly the writing is of personal solace and therapy for me with painful pause at times, remembering and reminiscing in those old photos I’ve sorted for the last two years. Ultimately, my hope is not to cry because it’s over but smile that it happened.
Sometimes holding on is what makes us strong; sometimes it’s letting go. This is a part of that.
Every one has a story and this is ours. Part hers, part mine and part yours- a few words about the things that happened before and in between along with my unsupressed after thoughts. Stuff that is still hard to talk about. At least not to little girls that might still be trying to figure out how life works. This work is my effort and pleasure to share the gifts and the legacy of a person that meant so much to me- about the girl of my dreams who became the love of my life- about her and her all too brief, unfinished life.
She will always be my wife, your mother, our friend-
Peggy Sue Force Adam.
The Special Days of Our Lives
Birthday September 5, 1950
Matriculation September 9, 1968
First Rose December 1968
That Summer of Love 1970
Lavaliered October 7, 1970
Pinned November 20,1970
Engaged April 22, 1971
Married August 12, 1972
Seperated April 1, 2003
Last Rose April 7, 2003
The End of The Beginning
December 31, 2003 11:45 PM
A new year is coming, like it or not. It doesn’t matter or I don’t care. I’m not sure which. I’m surely not ready for a new one but without doubt, want this one to end.
All the goodness seems gone. First her- then joy, love, freedom. I wonder if color and music will be next. Gray has become the color of truth.
The annual accounting of the year and new resolutions would be the norm, but there won’t be either of these tonight.
In contrast it was a year that I’d never made a better living and had a worse life. A defining and woeful year marked by tragedy and miserable events for everyone it seems. Life seems to be far less than half full tonight without her with just enough Merlot in the bottom of my cup to stay numb.
Closure- a popular and abused word, I think. I’m thankful I haven’t heard it as the final solution to the despair. I know it describes the hopeful part of the equation of life- pain and suffering followed by healing and forgetting. Tonite is about remembering. The exit wound is still to fresh and painful for anything else.
Living is an unending circle it seems but life has a beginning and an end just like the calendar that's been hanging on the refrigerator. It reminds me of what kind of year it’s been- still frozen in March.
We hadn’t celebrated nor made New Years promises for a long time. Third stage people don’t do that as they come to value a new day more than a new year.
I haven’t discovered much about myself these last few months, but digging through some old papers I found a little more of her- a resolution written in 1987 for me that was always her style- short and sweet;
“Be Happy”.
It was one of many discoveries I’d made in the last eight months that are subtle messages and tangible signs of encouragement I needed now more than when they were written in order to end one thing before starting the next.
“Each day is a gift” is certainly a glib cliché but we tend to habitually and personally celebrate only one annually- our arrival. Hers wasn’t honored this year- only mourned.
Every one has a biography though. It begins on their birthday- a celebration that starts and is honored every 365 days, sometimes reluctantly. None of them should be in respect to those who no longer have the privilege. They always seem to take their special day and personal history with them.
A lot of people claim they’re not afraid of death but most don’t realize or accept that they are dying. Jennifer was given a pink candle when she was born, calibrated for the first few years to celebrate them by lighting it and burning it down. I’m glad we stopped it after six or eight years. It’s a terrible metaphor of life.
Uncertainty of mortality is a gift that we shouldn’t take for granted. If we knew when we would burn our life candle out perhaps we’d get a countdown clock something like the one in Times Square tonight. This personal timekeeper would countdown the days, hours and minutes to demonstrate how much we have left. Maybe then we’d value every day and moment, celebrating each as a birthday, without regrets, not wasting away a single one. Life just doesn’t work that way though. Kings 20:1 spells it out. Always be prepared. In appreciation or condemnation only He determines the day we’ll arrive and the moment we’ll leave this earth.
The good news tonight is that I’m too tired for a nightmare. Perhaps a little reminiscing and couple of tears to finish this year- alone.
Before We Began
In 1950 peace and prosperity had arrived for the 150 million people in the U.S. We didn’t think much about the Iron Curtain or communism but felt safe between the fence rows and cornfields of rural Iowa. They were recorded by historians as the Fabulous Fifties. Truman was in charge, the Korean Conflict was over, there was a post war boom and we would become known as the “baby boomers”. An ice cream cone cost a nickel- a loaf of bread only a dime more. RCA had invented a color tube. In the country, television was new in black and white, while telephones were on party lines. Most houses had indoor plumbing.
It was a period of life with emphasis on family as the boys came back from the war, epitomized by the TV shows Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet.
Poodle skirts and Rock & Roll were the fashion and music of the times. Life expectancy was 68 years.
September 5, 10:30 AM-
Labor Day.
In the heartland it wasn’t a particularly remarkable fall day in Knoxville, Iowa- just another day of hard work for most people. The State Fair was over and another school year was just beginning while out on the farms the harvest continued.
I’d already arrived on the planet, fifty miles away nearly seven months before on a Saturday. Peggy Sue Force was delivered on this earth by Dr. Gutch on a cool, cloudy Tuesday morning to Paul and Betty.
Most of this period is told to me in photos of a pretty little girl with flat feet, raised in a good home by loving parents. A small town kid not so different than Batavia where I grew up as a country mouse.
She loved little animals, her grandma’s peonies and riding her bike on hot summer evenings.
Her story in snapshots are like scenes in a movie, that fast forward to significant and memorable life events chosen and defined by the photographer.
If you weren’t there or in the picture they would be tedious and unremarkable. Her birthright as the first born included a more than normal amount of photos of predictable activities that could easily have been lost in time but were saved in scratchy Kodachromes and faded Polaroids by caring, pack rat parents. I felt I’d shared in some of those developmental years from the stories she and her folks told about those snapshots.
We might have passed each other in the bigger town of Ottumwa that separated us and surely crossed paths when my high school played theirs in football. She wasn’t a city kid nor a farm one either. I called her a townie to distinguish and define the differences in our up bringing. I doubt there were many.
Peggy’s beauty and brilliance was documented so well in those pictures and further confirmed on special events as a homecoming queen and valedictorian. Her character and values came to her by the nature and nurturing of good parents. I imagine she was the stereotype of many first borne that inherently developed into responsible and mature adults that she always seemed to be.
The motto for the class of 1968- “Climb though the way be rugged” was probably appropriate while the war in Vietnam was growing in spite of the rebellion of the 60’s children. I doubt we knew it but the times were good as we continued to be insulated from it all in the rural center of the country.
I imagine her adolescent experiences, development and popularity were pretty much like my own- mine more athletic, hers more academic.
Of Serendipity & Fate
We can’t direct the wind- only adjust our sails to it. What were our destinies, ambitions and vocations in life to be? I don’t imagine either of us knew or much cared in those pubescent days of petty problems and trusting innocence.
“I don’t know if we each have a destiny or
if we’re just floating around accidental like on a breeze. I think maybe it’s both happening at the same time.”
Forest Gump
Like the opposites of random events and preordained destiny, I don’t know which has had the most or if any effect on the outcomes of our lives. I imagine one’s opinion has a lot to do with their circumstance and their faith. I’d like to imagine our chance meeting was a destiny.
September 9, 1968, 7:30 A.M.
Matriculation, NMSC
OUR paths converged on a cool September day in Kirksville, Missouri. It was dark when I pulled on a very tight, very new pair of Levi’s. The smell of new denim was familiar to me on so many of these first days of school. There was a difference today though and I was a little uncertain, feeling inadequate. I’d rehearsed the trip and knew the way. It didn’t seem to help. I was beginning my life in the big leagues on my first day of college.
Brother and I had moved from very rural Iowa to Missouri- a place only a hundred miles away but as far as we’d ever been from the home place, “a mile east of the Eldon Y”. One of those places that you had to be born to in order to appreciate living or leaving there. The “Y” was the odd shape of today's geographic convergence.
I pulled on my High School letter jacket sure I’d fit right into the collegiate fashion. Leaving Missouri Hall I joined my twin living in Dobson. Not surprising we were wearing matching outfits and going to the same class. Last night was the first time we’d lived apart and in separate buildings. It added little to my confidence.
Fifty miles west of Batavia two girls from another small Iowa town located “a mile south of the Russell corner”, had made a similar southern pilgrimage to end up in the same location at the same time for the same class.
Just down the walk was the biggest and newest building on campus, Violet Hall, home to most business and education classes. On this day we’d be joining other rookies and Professor Kolenburg to study Contemporary Math 101.
In the southeast corner we naturally took seats together in the middle on the right of the big stadium room. As we waited for the first class of 1968 to begin, I perused the competition. Directly across the room sat two girls, a petite brunette and, by comparison, a tall blond.
As a marginal scholar I was happy and surprised to be in college, almost as an afterthought. This day was truly the first of a different life in every way had I taken another path.
I was business, she was education- what this class had to do with either I don’t know but we were both in the same room on this day.
The first impression is often the last. Destiny surely gave me a second.
As the weeks passed I found my eyes and mind drifting across the room more and more than on the math at the podium.
Roll call was the norm in those days, so her name wasn’t a challenge. Rhea Ann sat next to Peggy Sue. From near conception to this day they’d been best friends in Russell. Life partners- a lot like Ed and Fred Lee.
As a country kid I’d never needed the fortitude it took a few weeks later to approach the tall blond stranger in the hallway before class one day. Even in a big room I supposed she had noticed, perhaps even avoided, a pair of twins in matching red and white letter jackets. I knew that basic familiarity wasn’t going to make it any easier as I took a very nervous, very deep breath and walked up to her with the best line I could think of at the moment without rehearsal. “Hey, do you know today's assignment.” Almost instantaneously I surmised what a dumb question it was as we were just about to enter the classroom. She might have suspected a hick from the sticks from afar but now I’d likely confirmed it. (Silly enough that neither of us remember what the answer was.)
This was my first cold call and it was very cold indeed. I wasn’t encouraged. We’d had a conversation albeit unremarkable- at best. Still my thoughts and eyes made it difficult to study sets and subsets.
A few days later, walking on campus, we passed each other exchanging hello’s. Slowly I rebuilt my confidence and courage for another try.
I’d pledged a fraternity and was feeling more collegiate as a member of something. One of the TKE pledge assignments was to get names, telephone number, major and in this case the most important of all- social standing- of certain groups in a small red notebook. Peggy hadn’t pledged a sorority as a freshman but we were required to get ten independents as well. The ruse was ideal for my target as I approached her with my plea for information.
Status-”Free”.
Good. Good news indeed! She could have lied to avoid me, but didn’t. Maybe she didn’t know how. I’d find out about that later.
I mustered a little more courage later on in the fall to ask Peggy Sue Force from Russell, Iowa to a fraternity party near campus. As an 18 year old, it was likely the liberal and illegal beer that removed the inhibition and fear for me to talk more easily with her on that night.
Girls living in the dorm in 1968 had to be in for possible bed check before 10 PM sharp or suffer lockout by Mrs. “old lady” Payne. As we approached her dorm we slowed in front of the enormous stone columns of the entrance. It was the end of our first date and I hadn’t even mustered the bravery to hold her hand but was anxious as the liquor wore down in the cold October air as I wondered how to end the evening. I knew for sure I wanted to kiss this beautiful, flat footed blond girl in the wool plaid suit though.
Time has blurred the details of the next few moments as we talked and walked towards Ryle Hall that night. There was surely a moment of uncomfortable silence as I moved toward her and closed my eyes for a kiss. I remember it as quickly stolen and likely as dry and frigid as the columns we were standing in front of, followed by a faster “good night”. I imagine I spun around and bolted away, like a thief. I didn’t feel that way though. Around the corner as quickly as “my” Peggy went inside I felt like the frog kissed by the princess. Maybe it was the other way around and maybe I wasn’t her prince- yet. It didn’t matter. As cold as that chapped lipped kiss was, I felt I’d broken some ice.
That stolen smooch wasn’t a promise as we dated a few more times with no progression. I felt as though she wasn’t particularly interested- perhaps just between better men. I thought about her a lot anyway.
The Days of White wines and a Red Rose-
The end of our semester in Contemporary Math and Christmas break was only a few days away and she was on my mind- how could I show my interest and demonstrate my feelings for the object of my affection?
No doubt more than I could afford, I bought my first flower ever for anyone, a single red rose, then wrote the only thing I could think of on the card.... ed. With no more courage than creativity I had it delivered by... Fred.
It would be the first of the red roses I’d gave to Peggy Sue to celebrate the anniversary of this holiday season. It didn’t seem to illustrate much or enough as we became “just friends” and dated occasionally for the next two semesters. The kissing part ended anyway.
In our sophomore year I took her to a concert featuring “The Happenings”- a one hit wonder whose big song was “Will I See You In September?”. The lyrics of the ballad sang about “this guy’s in love with you...” and wondering whether their love would last through the summertime away from college and one another. The song warned of “having a good time but to remember the danger of the summer moon above”. I did, but wasn’t sure if there were any mutual feelings or if she cared to see me again.
I took the spring semester off to make some school money but thought about her, wrote her, and hoped it mattered wondering if I’d even go back to college.
In the summer I took a job in Des Moines. One day downtown she saw me on the street during her lunch break from Bankers Life.
Two people, apart for five months, from two small towns, meeting again on a street in a much bigger one, always made me wonder about chances and circumstances of the “small world” and the future as it is shaped on this chaotic planet.
It was a welcome reunion as I was invited to visit her, still rooming with her best friend Rhea Ann.
Something had changed. I’ll never know what it was but I was happy and comfortable to be with her. We saw each other every day for the rest of the summer.
Now I knew I was going back to college- to be with her.
One very hot evening in late August at the Dairy Queen she said what she’d held back for too long it seemed to me. I knew she meant it because she looked at me over that ice cream cone with a smile and echoed my words, “I love you too”. It was what I wanted to hear to confirm my hope that this was more than just my own infatuation. I was in love and wanted to be with her all the time.
From then on, we were.
Two halves
can make a whole
Two wholes
together
That is beauty.
That is love.
Our college years were a blur of socials and Greek activities- formal and not so formal affairs, wild parties and progressions to trust, respect and devotion.
Falling in love was the first, most sudden and perhaps biggest passage in my life. The adolescent days of “all about me” would become something bigger I can only describe as- all about we.
I met the parents in the fall and recognized their unpretentious, trust, faith and sincerity as testimony to their own “sissy's” genuine character.
We had things in common, pretty superficial in hindsight- age, geography, education and middle class backgrounds. There were differences too. More than just our heights.
We watched and played along with The Dating Game at lunch and didn’t do well. What we didn't know about each other didn’t get much thought or consideration in those times of gullible youth. She was the reserved, contemporary, saver type- I the go-for-it-all, gregarious, nostalgic and spender type. The emotional differences were so opposite they seemed contradictory. Me, the yo yo, her the flat liner. Me the personality, her the person. Me, the flyer, she the terminal. My safety net.
Maybe the bigger the differences the more dependent we’d become on each other. Odd logic.
Or just dumb luck. I think the relationship began, developed and survived because of the differences. Not so much like the opposites of oil and water, rather complimentary, like a puzzle. We were distinctly dissimilar people but with common dreams that we talked a lot about. Peggy didn’t need me in the way she described needy women but wanted me enough. Conversely I would need her as a base, keeping me grounded, while she kept the home fires burning. She accepted me as a high maintenance person and served my needs without becoming dependent.
The fall, winter and spring of our junior year moved quickly from one piece of jewelry to another.
Lavalieres were necklaces with a greek dangle and on October 7, 1970 I gave her mine.
Like going steady in high school, it was the first of many progressions to her accepting my fraternity pin in November. She was honored as our “TKE Sweetheart” and loved by the brothers as well.
In the spring we went to a movie starring Ryan O’Niel and Ali McGraw called “Love Story”. They overcame great struggles in college with dreams of family- the firstborn to be named Bozo.
The story line was a tragedy with Jenny succumbing to cancer before her time. We adopted the theme song from the movie “Where Do I Begin... to tell the story”. In these idyllic days we seemed to relate to the deep and often sarcastic love of the two actors without any understanding of the grieving of their cruelly shortened lives together.
It’s the endings that make the circumstances of the beginnings so heartbreaking and this was the first time I ever saw her cry.
It wasn’t a special place or surprise on April 22nd, 1971 when I asked her to marry me.
It might have been presumptuous to expect her reply though.
“Yes.”
I asked, He gave.
I asked God for water, He gave me an ocean.
I asked God for a flower, He gave me a garden.
I asked God for a tree, He gave me a forest.
I asked God for a friend, He gave me Peggy.
Life was good and life was simple. That’s they way it’s supposed to be. Events were logical and ordered. Truth and love were effortless, describable, definable. Never was as easy to understand as always and forever. Eternity was a church word. The color of truth was black and white just like the television shows of our youth.
It was our second summer of love and we had to be apart. Life together would be tested for a future of being apart. I went home to work while Peggy stayed in college for summer school. Love would have to be 90% mental with the missing part- another half. She wrote love letters- every day it seemed.
We were a couple now and together nearly everyday of our Senior year, still discovering each other, still playing The Dating Game at lunchtime. We were getting better as we got to know each other and it showed in our scores. We talked, we walked and held hands a lot.
A hundred pizzas later it was time.
I, Thee Ed...
August 12, 1972, 1:00 P.M.
It had been four years and thirty five days since I’d met Peggy on that cool September day. Today I’ll marry a good friend, the one I’d laugh and dream with, live and share the future for. It seemed all too fast but we thought we were ready to be relatives.
It was a fairy tale progression that led to our wedding that I’d wish for everyone.
Peggy accommodated me, as always, agreeing to a Catholic wedding in St. Patrick’s. She was a magnificent bride. A simple affair by today’s standards with only one glitch- the photographer forgot to take the lens cover off.
I don’t know if it could have been any hotter that day but Peggy had done a wonderful job putting it all together. We honeymooned at the Arrowhead Resort in The Lake of the Ozarks.
Peggy gave me many things in life that began with this sacrament of marriage- starting with an unfamiliar new responsibility for someone else and a different purpose in life.
Her greatest gift to me was confidence- to believe in myself, something that didn’t come naturally as part of a big family or preached to me as we did our own. She laughed at my jokes and taught me to laugh at myself.
It was only a few months of marriage, in a moment of self-doubt, that I asked her for the first time:
“Why did you marry me?”
“You make me laugh.”
“Sometimes I make you cry too.”
“There’s more of one than the other.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
About once a year I’d need the same confirmation.
Women grow, men don’t.
Peggy had a pragmatic understanding of married life. The first paradox and deception in married life begins on the wedding day with the groom’s perspective. “She’s a princess, loves me and will never change from the beautiful body and accommodating heart I’ll walk down the isle with today.” The Brides perspective is often just the opposite and just as wrong- “Not perfect but with a little work I’ll make him a prince.”
Worth remembering.
I still had a semester left so we’d rented an upstairs apartment not much bigger than the two of us. It was our first home and we were still honeymooning- now learning the difference between loving and living together. It’s different and harder. You can’t drive, run or walk away from it.
Whatever it was that we had in those early days wasn’t much by any measure but what we had, it seemed was all that we needed- mostly just each other.
Some things hadn’t changed. I was still in college with no job nor money for exorbitant Christmas gifts while Peggy’s B.S. in Elementary Education in a college town qualified her to check groceries at the Hy-Vee.
I’d found a small unfinished wooden music box that played the tune to our movie, Love Story, whose marquee line in the sad saga of love and loss was, “Love is never having to say you’re sorry”.
I spend several evenings before Christmas sanding, staining and hiding it, then applied a wedding picture of us looking at each other, burned the edges for effect and decoupaged it to the top. I know she appreciated it along with the fourth rose as we started our traditions, adjustments and accommodations of life- as a couple.
I suppose we started our lives together like so many others. Conflict and contradictions aplenty, discovering our strengths and weaknesses. Now we’d begin to learn the realities of life. It wasn’t always fair and sometimes quite the opposite.
One of them I've named the “Maytag Paradox” after the Iowa based company that so many locals believed made the best appliances in the world. Early in life when you needed a sturdy, long lasting washer and dryer you can’t afford it. Later when you could, you don’t need it. Health, wealth and the special love couples need to stay together often have the same cruel contradiction.
I finally graduated in December. Everything we owned fit in a 4 by 6 foot U-Haul, hooked to a Mustang and we were off for sunny Florida without jobs or money but plenty of energy, hopes and youthful naiveté to accept whatever came to us. We didn’t have a clue what that would be, but the world was ours to conquer.
Middlings
Take you, For my Wife...
Martin Luther King’s famous 1954 speech, “I Have A Dream” was made in the beginning of our lives. I related to it in a very philosophical and personal way now. Real and recurring dreams have meaning without definition or interpretation. Our dreams were founded on our nature and our nurturing. I think we came from different places on both. I suppose every couple does to one degree or another. Now they would have to be combined to build common and mutual hopes and expectations.
In those early days of television- Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, June and Ward Cleaver seemed to have it all. The story lines in them always had a family, a moral and a happy ending. Our dream coming from the 1950’s generation was the same- dad went to work, made the big decisions while mom raised the kids and went along with it all.
As sexist and seemingly demeaning it was, I imagine it’s the way many families might hope for today as it represents so few of them. We built our old fashioned family without much thought about the sacrifices. We worked, ate at home, and partied on nickel beer nights at Rosie O’Grady’s, while Peggy clipped ten cent coupons.
Living in Orlando was good as young people especially coming from small town life in the North. Abundant sunny days and night life as well as aunt Franny and uncle Jim on weekends, who took us in as family so far away from home. We were always Iowans at heart- temporarily adventuring elsewhere.
Faith & Family
Peggy had what I always envied- a quiet, deep and abiding Christian faith wherever she practiced it. She took her wedding promises seriously and had studied the Bible enough to know and remind me that the root meaning of catholic (little c) is universal. Regardless, she was ready to join the big C formally. We attended Mary Magellan Church headed by a big Irishman, Father Caverly. He sent us to a bigger one, Father Gary, an itinerant priest from Belfast who insisted that we both share in his personal tutoring every Thursday evening for Peggy to join the church. Without fanfare or celebration she became a Catholic- for me.
Life Lessons
Peggy believed there were three phases of married life when couples hold hands. Trust, tenacity, tolerance, a common cause and commitments of many kinds might get us through them all. Perhaps it’s better described as a mutual respect. We hoped so anyway.
In the first phase, the pubescent beginnings, couples hold hands for the obvious reasons- the passion and physical infatuation driven by young hormones. It’s the primal, anatomical, organic period when the closeness of touching and feeling are so intuitive by nature. Certainly these times were those. I suppose we would have hoped this period would last forever and thats what we didn’t know. It wouldn’t. Life would get harder and become more complicated in the next stage.
Nesting
Two years and the urge of home of our own had us building our first house. We made up a chart to raise $3100 for our down payment. It was frustratingly fun- earning less than $10,000 per year- combined.
Our neighborhood in Wrenwood was a typical starter community; young couples in cookie cutter floor plans with every sixth one the same- few with living room furniture and all with mortgages we could barely afford. It was a wonderful time with like minded neighbors without pretense. We made good friends and shared in everything we had- not much. Suburban life was spontaneous including street parties started on Saturday afternoons with a couple of beers shared with a neighbor.
One notable difference in the families were those with and those without babies. Seems like the real homes were families with a baby or two.
Like one season is bound to follow another, building a house was followed by making it a home as we began talking about getting one for us.
Peggy held the neighborhood babies at parties and had a natural, comfortable, confident feel with them in her arms. We’d tried and waited for two years and it seemed the next logical acquisition. We believed we had enough carefree days, plenty of the nightlife, thought we were ready and were sure we could make a perfect baby of our own.
It would become a frustrating quest that would prove the adage that you can buy the things you like but not the things you will love.
I’ve built many things in life with a little determination and some sweat equity; houses into homes, products into profit, even business’s into friendships. The harder the task, the greater the pride in the result. This would turn out to be the same. We’d start the project the same way we’d started all the others.
Building a home and a family are entirely different matters. It takes some determination for sure, but the dissimilarity could be described as the difference between having kids and having a family, becoming a parent and parenting. One is old fashioned biology and practice, the other was Peggy’s specialty- and problem.
Our lives so far was as predictable as a fairy tale, “... and they lived happily ever after”. So many things up to this point could be achieved by big dreams and a little blind faith. In this case- stop the pill, make a baby.
Nurturing
May 27, September 25, February 22.
After the all about me and all about thee it would become all about them.
Big things seemed so easy. We’d find that little ones would be more difficult.
We approached it like we has so many other things- with a plan. We didn’t have a clue how much a baby really costs but made a chart to measure our progress. The latest estimates for a baby until age 18 is several hundred thousand dollars.
A year later without a penny in the account and an equivalent amount of luck we scheduled a meeting with Peggys OB/GYN, Dr. Lucas, for advice. It was hard to concede coming from big families that we needed help. Infertility was neither a science nor a specialty in those days. Neither was there a buffet of drugs available to aid in our efforts. First her checkup, then mine- okay on both. Forget spontaneity, now we’d follow the schedule. The technology of the day was charting temperatures to optimize our chances.
Eight months later, several other hometic methods of the time and without blessing we met with young Dr. Lucas again. We never gave up hope but accepted his rationalization after a consoling lecture by him.
“Patience” is how a baby is made from a million little miracles, the first, perhaps smallest, of them- conception. A Christian man, I suppose, who perhaps in his own frustration described baby making as a God gift. We had to be patient while avoiding confrontation, blame or fault.
There was some rationale that “ maybe it wasn’t meant to be” as we talked about how happy we could be alone while we considered the adoption option.
We kept busy with work and didn’t give up on his optimism. Happy enough, we laughed at the thought of just the two of us, for too long, would have us walking out of the house one day for a movie forgetting we were parents. In the meantime we adopted a kitten- Bozo.
The newest procedure was to inject a nasty solution followed by an X-ray to find blockages- an uncomfortable test with no observable problems. Having found no logical reason for Peggy not getting pregnant and perhaps just to do “something”, Dr. Lucas recommended a new surgical laparoscopy procedure to take a physical look at Peggys plumbing.
We’d planned a trip to Europe and scheduled it for after our return. While there, Peggy’s stomach was upset with nausea at, what seemed like, every bridge we walked over. I excused it to the fast pace, European food and Oktoberfest.
One night in Paris she reluctantly said she thought she was pregnant and scared as she admitted she was bleeding.
We were careful, cautiously concerned, hopful and anxious to get home where we quickly took a lab sample for the rabbit test.
I was home when the doctor called and immediately went to see Peggy at work with a box of Pampers.
Dr. Lucas speculated the barium solution for her test had likely cleared an obscure blockage that resulted in pregnancy almost immediately. He assured us the spotting was not unusual or excessive.
Now we could start decorating while counting the days. Yellow- as I remember. We both wanted our flavor to be a surprise.
Things happened quickly in the next few months as I was promoted and we prepared to move to Shreveport. I commuted for several months while the house was being finished.
Jennifer Marie came to us after eight long hours of labor on May 25th and changed our lives forever. Peggy was happy, proud and fulfilled.
I’d have to adjust a little to become a more responsible adult. Peggy was a natural parent and mother. It was harder for me.
Another job transfer, similar delays, concerns, procedure and result came two years later as we tried to create Jennifer's playmate. After a difficult labor Meredith Lee arrived by cesarean in Mankato twenty eight months later a little unexpectantly while I was away. Without reminder, I’ll always regret not being there for both of them.
The “blowing of the tubes” seemed to work so well I kidded Peggy next time we ought to just drop by the Texaco for service to have a baby.
The contention for number three in part had to do with every man wanting a son. We’d reserved the name Jonathan from the family for when “he” came along.
Catherine Sue arrived in February 1983. Peggy’s greatest gifts came to us in one flavor in natural order with distinctive personalities. I’d be surrounded for a lifetime by women- a mother, eight sisters, a wife and now three daughters. Without regrets or bias, if I had a choice between all of one or all of the other they would all be girls.
My rationale is in the poem;
A son is a son until he takes a wife,
A daughter is a daughter all her life.
It’s true.
I thought I’d learned a little more about women in our eleven years of marriage. God and our girls showed me I had a lot to learn.
Hail to Peggy, full of life and with our children.
Blessed is the fruit of her womb.
Holy Peggy, mother of three,
She prayed for them in all the hours of her life.
I sometimes wonder about the shoulda’, coulda’, woulda’. She’d had a reproductive disorder, however minor it seemed at the time. Was it a precursor for the problems that were to come and should more have be done to prevent them? I’ll always wonder and encourage our girls to take special care.
For Richer or Poorer...
All that we had is all that we needed.
I think many people live dual lives in parallel time- the one they dream of opposite the one they have to. Our dream was of a model family much like we’d seen in black and white on those three fuzzy channels in the 50’s. Peggy kidded about not wearing heals in the kitchen like she imagined June Clever in Leave It To Beaver did.
In a generation where our style of family was rare we lived our dreams and fantasized how it could be improved on from those old TV models and the ones that we’d been raised.
Everyone is a parenting expert before they become one. I think it’s natural to compare and want to advance ourselves from our parents. So much for idealistic youth when the realities of life come along.
A little sacrifice afforded us a life with Peggy able to be at home with the girls. We didn’t have the biggest nor the best stuff of life but did without very little to have enough. I think the girls understood. Life wasn’t perfect but it was predictable. As in those old television shows mom was always there- predictably and happily ever after.
And she was.
Marriage in the Middle-
Many studies conclude that couples in good marriages will live longer lives. It makes sense but staying in love for a lifetime is a miracle, perhaps implausible except for a few species of pea brain birds.
Like an investment, I think, it requires time, tolerance and talent while gyrating in value. Sometimes it is hard to be together and in love all the time. The statistics bear the truths of the struggle of putting two animals together. Peggy experimented with two cats once that couldn’t get along with each other. Spraying both with the same perfume, putting them in a box together to bond. Poor box.
Marriage tests many things- patience, commitment, trust, understanding. Some make the grade, some don’t. The statistics are sad and bear the truth for every irreconcilable reason. Character matters and she had it.
“Holding on” is how Peggy described the second period of hand holding with the conflicting rivalries of marriage, family and career. Haunted by the recollections of the wedding day- she’s no longer a perfect size five and he hasn’t changed at all.
It’s a perfect storm of natural conflict when familiarity breeds contempt. Peggy detailed this middling period as when couples hold hands to keep from killing each other. Different needs, different wants. It’s also described as “the seven year itch” or when the “honey moon is over”. However it’s described it’s hard. And these times were those.
Surviving this era requires a transition- perhaps an epiphany to discover the difference between love and loving. Maybe it’s like the difference between fish and fishing. The first will feed you once, the other for a lifetime. Love is an event- loving a lifestyle.
It’s hard living together under the contract of health, wealth and happiness when there’s also sick and poor. Sad times too. Kids instinctively endeavor to conquer and divide couples at times- whether for attention or defiance. I think it’s just a part of the growing up process.
We were no different than so many others, I suppose, in the generations before and certainly to follow.
It was a period that was blurred by which was the frosting and which was the cake- good times with predictable trials and tribulations of the middling times. I wonder if knowing that they would happen would have made it any easier. Probably not.
I think the best thing both can do is stay in their own corner when the fight starts. My selling and Peggy’s serving came to us as natural vocations- very different and very compatable because of the different job requirements.
In times of discord and disagreements Peggy was a patient mediator. It was her style and it worked while I preferred more immediate resolutions.
A perfectly puzzling paradox.
We agreed on enough things though. We survived, without recognizing or bringing the “D” word into the debate as an option or resolution. I think we were afraid in some mutual or codependent sort of way.
I introduced her as my first wife to a big laugh at parties. She’d always reply, “just wait” probably without any one knowing the inference. I did. Peggy aptly described how men are in their mid life crisis. It’s not just an afternoon drama story line. She knew the little blond babes on the arm of an old man were not so understanding or tolerant as she was. Perhaps it was some insight that came from her enjoyment of the PM soaps.
In Good Times and Bad...
Living with this Adam isn’t easy. For this one I am sure. I’m sorry for that. Determination, passion and pride all have a good and bad side to them. Peggy dealt with my periods of quiet desperation with an equivalent measure of patience. For that I’m thankful. She had the gift of reconciliation combined with a calmer determination, passion and pride.
Fortunately the downs always had longer upsides in the ebb and flow of our middling times together. Our relationship evolved, subliminally recognizing the commitment underlying it as we stayed together without growing apart- sometimes for them, sometimes for us. Time was the answer to all the rough periods as we developed, accommodated and acclimated to our joys, sufferings, quirks, needs and shortcomings.
He must have been in the middle with us.
My mother and the nuns in Sunday Catechism taught us their way of praying. As kids we said rote morning prayers, meal prayers and night prayers. Even more during May, Mary’s month, along with Lenten Rosaries.
One of them that allowed us to add our own wishes that I’ve continued and adapted over many years was the Morning Offering.
Oh Jesus, through the Immaculate heart of Mary, I offer my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of the Sacred Heart in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world in particular for; Peggy and our girls, purity, to do better work and the right vocation in life. Amen.
The hope for the right vocation seems to change in different stages of life. I’ve come to believe the definition not as a title, job nor career in any traditional sense, but a passion. Sometimes good, sometimes not, but there’s always with a price. I know Peggy’s natural passion wasn’t defined as a vocation, though it was- as a wife, friend and mother. It’s hard work and I think I envied her for how she instinctively balanced them between our girls and me as a friend to all.