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Moving away from Family
After our summer theater time was up, we did one of the impulsive moves which seemed to make up our lives together. We took the old closet doors my father-in-law had just replaced and made railings around the grey Silverado short bed truck and moved to a place we had never been. Our last year in Wyoming we kept randomly hearing about Ashland, Oregon in odd but repeating mentions. A man from there stopped at the gas station where my future husband worked, and offered to trade potatoes for a bit of gasoline. A instructor from the creative writing department came to our Jr. college from Southern Oregon State College, because we were near one of the WWII Japanese Internment camps and he had been a child in one and was touring them to promote his poetry book. Lawson Inada was his name.
It was before google, so we looked at anything we could find. Including the free paper magazines of motel ads which had a tiny thumbnail showing mountains in the background.
And so we moved. In our time together we moved 13 times in the first 12 years and then not again since 1996.
Ashland wasn’t the same as being near family, and we took a year off to work and get state residency before continuing with college classes so we could pay in state tuition. Him at Domino’s Pizza and me at Taco Bell. We made friends from both places and I still have some of them.
The college was a quarter system, which made making friends harder. 9 week classes, then a change meant we didn’t really get to know other students well and our first Thanksgiving away from family was at the community dinner, the second at Pizza Hut. It was a depressing and lonely time and I cried alone at home a lot of nights when I worked days and he worked nights and then went to practice at the theater he had found small roles in.
Ashland was famous for theater, especially their Elizabethan Globe Stage and the Shakespeare festival. They also had a mild climate compared to Wyoming and flowers and green leaves year round in Lithia Park. We loved a lot of the things in town but couldn’t afford to see many plays or eat out often, so we spent a lot of time in the park and nearby hills.
It was before google, so we looked at anything we could find. Including the free paper magazines of motel ads which had a tiny thumbnail showing mountains in the background.
And so we moved. In our time together we moved 13 times in the first 12 years and then not again since 1996.
Ashland wasn’t the same as being near family, and we took a year off to work and get state residency before continuing with college classes so we could pay in state tuition. Him at Domino’s Pizza and me at Taco Bell. We made friends from both places and I still have some of them.
The college was a quarter system, which made making friends harder. 9 week classes, then a change meant we didn’t really get to know other students well and our first Thanksgiving away from family was at the community dinner, the second at Pizza Hut. It was a depressing and lonely time and I cried alone at home a lot of nights when I worked days and he worked nights and then went to practice at the theater he had found small roles in.
Ashland was famous for theater, especially their Elizabethan Globe Stage and the Shakespeare festival. They also had a mild climate compared to Wyoming and flowers and green leaves year round in Lithia Park. We loved a lot of the things in town but couldn’t afford to see many plays or eat out often, so we spent a lot of time in the park and nearby hills.
Ni Hao, Jung Guo
In August of 1987 we moved to Beijing Teachers College foreign student dormitory as exchange students. We had the best luck. A financial aid officer at our college got us qualified for grants to go, and a high school girl who’s family lived only a block from our Beijing College, moved to Ashland as an exchange student just as we were leaving to go. She sent us with introductions to her family and we quickly made friends who gave us access to their homes and family traditions and took us to explore things the other students in our group didn’t get to do.
Even after forty years of marriage I might say those 4 months were one of the most influential parts of our lives together. It showed us that people are people who love their families and are curious and good hearted even when they live very different lives. I might have never gone. I’m more than a bit agoraphobic but Greg was always my safe place, so I could go anywhere with him. I’d always said that I couldn’t learn languages, and that my years of German were only to teach me empathy for my students when they struggled, but when you are immersed in a world where you can’t speak or read the language, my brain found a way to learn, and when my fledgling Mandarin failed, even to dredge up every German word I’d failed to access on test days.
Even after forty years of marriage I might say those 4 months were one of the most influential parts of our lives together. It showed us that people are people who love their families and are curious and good hearted even when they live very different lives. I might have never gone. I’m more than a bit agoraphobic but Greg was always my safe place, so I could go anywhere with him. I’d always said that I couldn’t learn languages, and that my years of German were only to teach me empathy for my students when they struggled, but when you are immersed in a world where you can’t speak or read the language, my brain found a way to learn, and when my fledgling Mandarin failed, even to dredge up every German word I’d failed to access on test days.
In Sickness and in Health
When you first take these vows, You think that you’re talking about the two of you and whether one of you is sick and the other one is there to take care of them. But it didn’t take us long to learn that we were taking these vows to include his family and my family, which is now become our family. Or that sickness didn’t just mean physical because a lot of the things we’ve dealt with over four decades together have definitely been more of a mental illness.
Within the first four months of moving to Ashland Oregon we both came down with the flu. This wasn’t just a mild stomach flu. This was the one that convinced us that yeah, flu epidemics could easily kill thousands of people. We were 1300 miles from the closest relative and didn’t really have friends in our new town yet. We were living in a tiny one bedroom apartment above the stores on Main Street. It would’ve been bad enough if one of us was sick and the other could take care of them, But that’s not how it worked. At a time when each of us was struggling to figure out if we needed to sit on the toilet or kneel in front of it. There was only one. And neither of us had the strength to even climb into a shower. So that little apartment stunk. But I’ll never forget how he looked up, wiped his mouth, and said, “I’d rather be this sick with you than healthy with anyone else.”
By 10 days later, we knew we would survive, but we had each lost about 30 to 40 pounds. There came a knock on the apartment door and a big package was delivered. Greg got up and went to get it but was too weak to lift it into the apartment I couldn’t even see what he was doing, but I called out. “Don’t roll it it’s a TV.” It was. His brother had sent it to us but I have no idea how I knew what it was.
So we learned early on that sickness could take us both down and we could survive together.
Then we had a few years of being fairly healthy when I woke up screaming in pain on a trip up the coast with my parents and Greg. In one of the things I still regret, I slept on the bed knocked on my parents store and ask my mom to drive me to the emergency room without even waking Greg up. My only excuse is when you’re that sick you want your mom. It’s not a good enough excuse. She ended up having to drive me to an emergency clinic 25 miles north, and from there to the hospital another 25 miles north By the time Greg and my dad and my brother arrived I was being prepped for exploratory surgery, When suddenly, I felt a pop and the pain went away. 11 months later it returned with a vengeance. In the meantime we had our exchange student trip to China and I was nearing the end of my student teaching and preparing to graduate. This time I didn’t think the pain would last so I didn’t go to the hospital. When I did my body was starting to shut down and ejecting fluids from every orifice. My appendix had perforated 11 months earlier and my abdomen was a mess. But Greg was there at my side every time I swam up into some sort of consciousness.
Before we got married, I spent time with him in Billings, Montana, while he had surgery to cut his femur apart and stretch it out and put a metal pin in it. And attempt to adjust for having spent nine months in a body cast after a motorcycle wreck. At 15, while one leg grew and one healed. During our marriage he needed a couple of minor knee surgeries, and then both knees replaced. I had my appendix removed and my gallbladder and then had an emergency C-section 5 1/2 weeks early.
And then we began with a part of sickness, that was the family, my grandmother’s colon cancer, two times spending six weeks near a major medical hospital once in Rochester, Minnesota and once in Denver, Colorado, with out two young sons along. There with his mom as they tried to figure out her personality change and depression. Even trying a session of twelve electric shock treatments. my dad‘s esophagus cancer and horrific death, my mom‘s dementia, his dad‘s motorcycle wreck, one of his sister’s motorcycle wreck’s was fairly minor in the grand scheme of things but worried us for awhile. his other sister‘s mental break down, and another sister‘s death from heat stroke in the Grand Canyon. Then our granddaughter’s mom had mental issues and basically stepped out of her life when she was one year old so our son and granddaughter came to live with us. For awhile there was just so many deaths, his nephew was hit by a train, My dad died in 1997 but the other three of our parents died at the holiday time in three preceding years 2016, 2017, 2018. It began to seem like the only times we saw family was when we drove 3000 miles round-trip for another funeral.
Life is so hard and both Greg and I fought our own issues with depression at various times, but I always thought it was better together.
Within the first four months of moving to Ashland Oregon we both came down with the flu. This wasn’t just a mild stomach flu. This was the one that convinced us that yeah, flu epidemics could easily kill thousands of people. We were 1300 miles from the closest relative and didn’t really have friends in our new town yet. We were living in a tiny one bedroom apartment above the stores on Main Street. It would’ve been bad enough if one of us was sick and the other could take care of them, But that’s not how it worked. At a time when each of us was struggling to figure out if we needed to sit on the toilet or kneel in front of it. There was only one. And neither of us had the strength to even climb into a shower. So that little apartment stunk. But I’ll never forget how he looked up, wiped his mouth, and said, “I’d rather be this sick with you than healthy with anyone else.”
By 10 days later, we knew we would survive, but we had each lost about 30 to 40 pounds. There came a knock on the apartment door and a big package was delivered. Greg got up and went to get it but was too weak to lift it into the apartment I couldn’t even see what he was doing, but I called out. “Don’t roll it it’s a TV.” It was. His brother had sent it to us but I have no idea how I knew what it was.
So we learned early on that sickness could take us both down and we could survive together.
Then we had a few years of being fairly healthy when I woke up screaming in pain on a trip up the coast with my parents and Greg. In one of the things I still regret, I slept on the bed knocked on my parents store and ask my mom to drive me to the emergency room without even waking Greg up. My only excuse is when you’re that sick you want your mom. It’s not a good enough excuse. She ended up having to drive me to an emergency clinic 25 miles north, and from there to the hospital another 25 miles north By the time Greg and my dad and my brother arrived I was being prepped for exploratory surgery, When suddenly, I felt a pop and the pain went away. 11 months later it returned with a vengeance. In the meantime we had our exchange student trip to China and I was nearing the end of my student teaching and preparing to graduate. This time I didn’t think the pain would last so I didn’t go to the hospital. When I did my body was starting to shut down and ejecting fluids from every orifice. My appendix had perforated 11 months earlier and my abdomen was a mess. But Greg was there at my side every time I swam up into some sort of consciousness.
Before we got married, I spent time with him in Billings, Montana, while he had surgery to cut his femur apart and stretch it out and put a metal pin in it. And attempt to adjust for having spent nine months in a body cast after a motorcycle wreck. At 15, while one leg grew and one healed. During our marriage he needed a couple of minor knee surgeries, and then both knees replaced. I had my appendix removed and my gallbladder and then had an emergency C-section 5 1/2 weeks early.
And then we began with a part of sickness, that was the family, my grandmother’s colon cancer, two times spending six weeks near a major medical hospital once in Rochester, Minnesota and once in Denver, Colorado, with out two young sons along. There with his mom as they tried to figure out her personality change and depression. Even trying a session of twelve electric shock treatments. my dad‘s esophagus cancer and horrific death, my mom‘s dementia, his dad‘s motorcycle wreck, one of his sister’s motorcycle wreck’s was fairly minor in the grand scheme of things but worried us for awhile. his other sister‘s mental break down, and another sister‘s death from heat stroke in the Grand Canyon. Then our granddaughter’s mom had mental issues and basically stepped out of her life when she was one year old so our son and granddaughter came to live with us. For awhile there was just so many deaths, his nephew was hit by a train, My dad died in 1997 but the other three of our parents died at the holiday time in three preceding years 2016, 2017, 2018. It began to seem like the only times we saw family was when we drove 3000 miles round-trip for another funeral.
Life is so hard and both Greg and I fought our own issues with depression at various times, but I always thought it was better together.
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