The Story of Us - Part 10

 

The refill

The empty nest was so fleeting as to make me wonder if it was an illusion. The youngest son graduated high school in 2012, and went to UC Santa Cruz for the 2012-2013 school year and the day they were to go back for sophomore year they found out that they were going to be parents. And they didn’t return. By the oldest grandchild’s first birthday she was moved into our house with her dad and today she turned 11. I’ve long told her that mothering is a verb. And as her grandmother I’m blessed to also be able to mother her. But it comes with the sadness that her mother hasn’t seen her since she was three. 

Then when Daisy was two my oldest son had a son. Gavin turns 9, in 11 days and his little sister Trinity is six. Seven in August. Because they have two very capable parents, we get to have more an actual grandparent and grandchild relationship. They live four miles away, so we see them often and love them dearly, but aren’t raising them. Just loving them and leaving the heavy lifting to their parents. 

I had no great longing to be a grandmother but it’s been the joy of my life. And I’ll never forget the first weeks after we became grandparents how Greg would talk to himself as he got dressed, “Go to work, get home- and go see Daisy!” It took me awhile to fall so in love but he was there before she took her first breath. Grandpa’s girl. Who even as I type this is in the middle school, preparing for the coming Friday and Saturday concerts for the children’s youth choir she is in that he directs.

 

The ties that bind 

Once upon a time in a simple office above Main Street in Cody Wyoming a young man and woman stood in front of her family and a justice of the peace and promised what all newlyweds promise. 

To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse and forsaking all others to cleave only to him/her till death do us part. Amen 

And then three hours later we called his family to tell them it was a done deal. His mom swore she wouldn’t believe it until she saw the paperwork but by the time we arrived at her house three days later, she had a chocolate wedding cake waiting. 

The future remains unclear 

Writing at the end of April after posting a picture a day on the 365project website, Your kind views and comments this month made me question the wisdom of writing my story in this order but it helped me remember the truth in the Taylor Swift song “Happiness” 

“There will be Happiness after you but there was Happiness because of you” and 
“What will you do when a good man hurts you but you know you’ve hurt him too?”

So there was a 40th anniversary on May 21, 2024 but the 41st won’t be anything to celebrate. I knew that he had disconnected from me by October 26th when he went walking with us in the redwoods in the morning but kept checking his watch, then said he was going mushroom hunting with friends, left at 11 AM and texted at two the next morning to say he was too drunk and would be camping out at his buddy’s but it wasn’t until Jan. 20 that he looked up from unbolting the base of the Christmas tree that he admitted he had been cheating. Looking through the dry branches he said all the stereotypical things. I still love you, I’m just not in love with you. You’re still my best friend. Im not sure I want the marriage to end. 

But on March 29th. Our oldest son’s birthday he walked away early from the party and when I got home his essentials were gone. Since then he has been here a lot. Still directing the granddaughter for choir, still helping when the youngest son became brutally ill, still paying the bills and trying to be a friend and dad and grandpa. 

It’s not even a surprise. The signs were so clear. Lost a hundred pounds. Started going out drinking and mushroom hunting and fishing and camping and not making it home lots of nights. He was depressed and miserable and we are both feeling the relief. But we were too good at not bringing up our problems in front of our sons and making it still feel secure so this fracture really hurt the youngest son who lives with us, maybe more than me. 

And I don’t want to make myself sound guiltless. I was sick, but hadn’t worked or contributed financially for several years. I couldn’t be touched without triggering muscle contractions that hurt. Intimacy is something you think is only physical but losing it begins with lying to each other and lying can be simply avoiding telling the truth. We both share the blame there. 

But no regrets. Forty years of mostly happiness and two wonderful sons and three grandkids I adore. That is not a failure. 

And what can I say but beyond this there will still be happiness. 

The Story of Us - Part Nine

 

Middle and high school 

The boys were both good sons, but very different in interests and personality. They chose different middle schools and in our unified county wide district that worked well. The oldest liked sports and went to a K-8 school with a passion for football and lots of hunting and fishing families. The youngest chose a 7 & 8 grade middle school with clubs for math and a choir and field trips for science. 
Whenever we could we still fit in trips back to the towns Greg and I had grown up in to visit family and the Wyoming beauty that had formed us. We tried to never miss a concert or game. I wasn’t teaching full time, but sometimes I’d get full time substitute jobs and work close to a full year or semester. I considered myself so lucky to have the chance to be available to sub in my kids classes or volunteer on their field trips and never took for granted that I could do that because Greg was working full time plus usually at least five weeks out of the summer. 
Maybe we should have focused more on each other. It’s easy to find pictures of the boys but rare to find any of just the two of us. Communication got taken for granted a lot and usually we were on the run, so days turned into years at a breakneck speed. 

Empty Nesters

Two babies in 12 1/2 months meant two adult sons and suddenly a crowded house was empty. Son One was off working on a fishing boat so sometimes his dog lived with us, and one of his girlfriends had a two year old daughter that we got to practice our grandparenting skills on. Second Son had found a girlfriend in high school who was beautiful and brilliant and they both earned lots of scholarships so were off together at UC Santa Cruz. They came home for holidays but still . . . 
Empty nest. 

I found myself staring at a bare dining room table. The one I had dreamed of when it was buried under school books and fishing lures and mail. And just sobbing. Greg’s mom was sick, my mom was sick but both were thousands of miles from us being mostly cared for by siblings and nursing homes. 

Getting time together to rediscover that we were still friends was incredible. We went to some shows and played board games. Ate way too much and a lot of that was out at restaurants because driving around and eating together was always our happy spots. 

We still had the parrots and one of our cats and often the granddog but the time with just the two of us felt strange. Like an old comfortable pair of shoes you hadn’t tried on for a few years. 

Christmas Matters

Both Greg and I were raised celebrating Family at Christmas time and most of the Christmas times of the last 40 years were tied to family togetherness. So even though it is May I can’t consider our years together without a heavy portion of Christmas reminiscing. 
Christmas ‘82 and ‘83 at the jr college where we met we were living “in sin” but already married in our hearts, just not on paper. But we always said the paper is for other people. The commitment between us we do for just us. 
So the first year he went home to Newcastle where his older siblings also came back to their parents. And I went back to my parents home. And the next year he had a huge deal surgery over Christmas break, straightening the femur he had broken in a motorcycle at age 15,  so I spent a few days in Billings, Montana with friends so I could be at the hospital every day. Then his family all came to his sister’s new house in my parents hometown and we ended up joining together with our four parents and my grandma. His five siblings and a brother in law and my two brothers. He was pretty out of it having had his femur sawed in two with a staircase pattern so it could be pulled apart and moved over one step and thus lengthened. But in his codeine haze he missed a lot of the family celebration. 
The next year we were married and in Ashland, Oregon and too broke to go home. We got my first ever real tree for Christmas and left it up until Valentines Day. I never loved a tree more but that year I loved the scent and the touch and the lights. And we found a lovely angel we got cheap because her face was cracked. And then it wasn’t even cracked but had a thread of hot melt glue we easily removed. 
Over the years and as the family grew we traveled mostly to Wyoming in all kinds of winter weather and did it with kids in car seats they filled with diarrhea or with 1100 miles driven and suddenly snowed into a motel and missing the family anyway. We did one Christmas at Disneyland and three in a row at a parents funeral. We spent one with all our children so angry at me that they wouldn’t come home and we spent one with a granddaughter in the ER for six hours. But every friend, Sibling ,parent, grandparent, and child was always reminded that getting together as a family was important and worth even major inconvenience just to sit around a living room bursting at the seams with those who mattered.

The Story of Us - Part eight

 

Going home

From just after New Year in  1996 to Feb 1st 1997 my Dad fought esophageal cancer. At first he had surgery and then came to visit us on the coast. He climbed big sea stacks with two and three year old grandsons and had been told they got it all. But his bones ached. Returning home he learned it had spread, not only into his bones but also kidneys. It was a long, painful goodbye after that. We kept getting called back because he was dying. And then he would rally a bit and we’d have to go back to work. I remember hearing him tell me he had cancer and feeling like ice water had just flushed through my veins. 

I’ll never forget that Greg was with me everytime we went back. Loving my Dad and I, and taking care of the family. And when the inevitable happened and I collapsed he was there over and over again. Taking me to my healing places at the beach and redwoods and bringing my mom and brothers along on trips to watch whales and ride the skunk train and camp in tree houses and often including my mom and youngest brother in Christmas and summer vacations at Greg’s parents or siblings homes. For awhile the two of them were even included in the Goode Family Christmas gift exchange.

Disneyland visit 

With my mom and brother and our best friends. 
My boys were beyond blessed to find an extended family in the small group of kids in grandma Nadine’s daycare. She always said that when Greg and I adopted Austin that she adopted us. 
Two of the other kids were in one family and that family and ours became like real cousins. We spent holidays together and twice travelled to Southern California to do sea world and Disneyland and the beaches. My mom and that girl had adjacent birthdays. June 30 and July 1st and we spent both days in Disneyland. They wore birthday buttons and got lots of special attention. It was a great trip and on the way home we stopped in San Francisco and saw the musical version of Lion King.

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails

I’m glad that we were together from 1982 until 1993 before we finally had the son we had been talking about even on our very first date, when Greg and I drove up next to Yellowstone Park’s East Gate to listen to my friend play the piano at Pahaska TeePee. 
Once we had first one son, then in 18 days after his first birthday, two boys, life changed focus. It helped that we had already learned to adjust to living together, and liking each other as friends because there were a lot of days we were on the run in several different directions at once. We liked the adventure of following their interests, from pirates and fishing to cello and violin, to horse riding or renting quads at the beach. We camped, and rented cabins or yurts in Oregon State parks. Once Greg took the boys to Wyoming and South Dakota for his Dad’s 70th birthday while I was working. Several times I worked summer school, and then he worked sumner Band Camp and paint crew while the other stayed home. He took one year off and arranged field trips with the neighbor kids to plywood mills and aquariums and did big batches of blackberry pies in assembly line fashion, or borrowed a cider press and harvested our apples. They made one funny, scary movie called “moon monsters”
I encouraged messes, loving paint and science experiments and digging in the sand and mud. I loved that the spring horse I was given for my first Christmas was resurrected to gallop once more. 

The story of Us - Part 7

 

Pirates and fishermen

My life was mostly filled with boys. I had two younger brothers. After Greg and I got married, I had one nephew and by nine years later Greg‘s parents had five grandsons. His parents had started with three daughters. followed by three sons, then the 5 grandsons before the last grandchild was my niece, Remi. 
Being a boy’s mom was wonderful. It required a whole different level of energy and imagination than what I would discover once I had a granddaughter. I had one son who lived as a character, usually a pirate, but sometimes Chief Powhatan. My other son needed the outdoors like he needed fresh air. He wanted to climb trees, ride his bike, go fishing and have a ton of friends with him. 
My boys were only two and three, when my dad died. The youngest boy told me, “it’s OK mom. When you die the strongest part of you doesn’t die, and the strongest part of grandpa was the part that loved us.“
I quickly learned to say yes way more than I would have if my dad was still alive. When I want to stay home and sleep, I would remember that my dad would’ve given almost anything to say yes to another fishing trip or walking the beach.
And Greg was a big boy himself, he loved to play and he loved to roughhouse and there were times when I would hear the crash of something breaking and go into the other room asking who shattered the ceiling light only to find both of the boys pointing at dad who would be holding his Lightsaber and looking sheepish.

Easter Blessings

The First Easter that Greg and I spent together I was 18 and still living with my parents and brothers. We attended a little church called simply “the Church of God” and that Easter I invited him along to the sunrise service. We were dating but I wasn’t sure of anything at that point. Unlike my mom. I didn’t get him an Easter gift but she rolled up three little paper bags into a basket and filled it with cookies and candy. I was embarrassed by her simple gift but he was amazed that our preacher showed up in his bathrobe to pretend to be one of the disciples and first act out the scene of learning of the resurrection. Then the next day mom drove to our college. Found his car and slipped in a key chain with my high school senior portrait in it under a case that read “I love you.” Ugh! She was never subtle and loved drama but stalking my boyfriend for me! ???

Anyway from 1982 until 2024 we never spent an Easter apart. Often joking that we were regular church attendees- regularly going each Easter. Then he took on choir directing at the United Methodist Church when our boys were preschoolers and we actually became regulars for about 12 years. The Sunday school teachers and the pastor became part of our extended family in our chosen hometown. 

Each Easter we decorated eggs and hid baskets with various friends and family. Sometimes attending an outdoor service at Trees of Mystery in the Redwoods. 

Our boys were both born in Easter season so can sometimes have their birthday on Easter. Our children grew up and carried on the tradition with our grandchildren and I remembered baking sugar cookies and dying a gross of Easter eggs (yes a dozen, dozen) with my own grandmother because she filled small strawberry baskets with cookies and eggs for all the senior center and nursing home residents and the shut ins she knew of. 

Anyway. Religious or not the return of spring and flowers and life from the frozen winter in Wyoming was always a resurrection worth celebrating.

Our high school senior portraits 

Used to always hang in our bedroom with various cards we have exchanged. These were actually taken before we met during freshman year of college but they show why ever after, we always had people asking if we were brother and sister.

The story of us - part 6

 

Leaving the faucet running

So my aunt’s comment about having an overactive maternal drive, wasn’t exactly something we were unaware of. Unfortunately or fortunately, as it turned out - infertility runs in my family and I was barely in my 20s when I hit an early menopause just like my mother had after I was born when she was 24. We consulted doctors and tried lots of different medical approaches, and then we entered a pet shop with a little trifolds on the counter that said November is adoption month. Greg‘s mom and both her siblings and my cousin and my younger brother were all adopted and we realized we were very open to that idea. It took almost 2 years of meetings and driving 90 miles away to get through the preadopt process. We were told that we wouldn’t have hardly any chance of getting a newborn but because of my experience with a brother with down’s syndrome and with teaching special ed classes, and the fact that both of us were teachers, we knew that we were uniquely qualified to raise special needs children. We were willing to take on bigger groups if they needed to place siblings. To prepare for that we had our home inspected and attended classes, and qualified to be foster parents. 
In August 1992 We got our first and as it turned out, only foster child, an 11-year-old girl, whose birthday was one day after my own. Shortly after she moved in with us, she began sixth grade. Our families loved her and she traveled with us to Wyoming twice and I think overall we had a very positive impact on her. I hope so. She definitely left her mark in our hearts. While she was living with us, we got the unexpected call that a birth mother had chosen us if we were interested in a newborn, and when I asked when she was due, they said two weeks ago. For nearly 10 years, I’d been praying for a baby, then, for two years, not knowing if the child I would someday adopt, was one or several already born or still to be born. I had been praying for that child. Suddenly we were driving that familiar 90 miles to pick up a 14 hour old newborn boy. His birth mother placed them into my arms and said, “Here, honey meet your mom and dad.”
And when I took him in for his 6 month checkup, I found out I didn’t have breast cancer, but the Dr. said, “think positive”
So 18 days after our first son’s first birthday, our younger son was delivered by emergency c-section and the family was complete. My aunt again chimed in with her opinion, “so when you prayed for a baby, you forgot to turn off the faucet once your prayer was answered.” 
April 16 this year he turned 31 at the home of his 32 year old brother.

 

Miles and miracles

Since we both grew up in Wyoming, but were raising our boys on the redwood coast and were still determined to raise our boys knowing our families, we drove a lot of miles. Being teachers meant that we had the same schedules so we could always drive back for Christmas vacation. And because we had family in three corners of Wyoming, we often drove 1300 miles to Wyoming and another thousand circumnavigating the state. If you know Wyoming in December and early January you know we had to go nearly 400 extra miles in the winter when Yellowstone is closed, and that we often had blinding blizzards and equally hazardous ground blizzards we called snow snakes. 
But sometimes we had long trips in the summer too, or sometimes our families would come to visit us. 

But we always had this odd sense that our lives together had been following a plan, a plan where we would just barely have enough things, always be in debt to others and yet have an abundance of love. I called it my two pair of pants deal. Everytime I got a third pair, one of them would be destroyed. Everytime we got a “crisis” needing extra money, just that amount would unexpectedly appear. If we really needed tires or a washing machine went out, suddenly there would be the money to pay for it. But our life would be decorated in early American yard sale. Once we “borrowed” a hundred dollars from my parents for groceries and spent $25 on a couch at a yard sale and apologized. My Dad, in typical Paul Miller logic said, “I’d rather sit on a couch than a $25 bill.”
And we had many on the road miracles that saved us from our own poor choices. 
One time I was driving a long, long straight stretch of road between Lakeview, Oregon and Winnemucca, Nevada. My husband was asleep and it was about 45 minutes after sunset. Suddenly he sat up and declared, “cow!” And I hit the brakes. Then we looked at each other and laughed and I started moving again, but just then we crested a small hill and right in our lane, with her back to us, was a solid black cow, on a blacktop road in the high desert blackness. 
One time we were driving in blinding snow. The kind you feel like you’re in a Star Trek warp speed simulation as white needles of light fly past you. Our oldest son, merely 2, suddenly asked, “God please lift up this storm.” And we sighed and wished it were so simple, but literally within a few car lengths, the pavement was dry and clear and stayed that way until we arrived at our motel. 
Another night, our heater wasn’t keeping up, I was scraping frost from the inside of the windshield, we had four parrots in cages with us for the stupid reason we wanted to give one to my mom and show off the others. It was 8 below zero, f* but also windy. We needed a motel but there was only one, small non chain motel for a hundred miles. I was terrified they’d never let us have the birds in the motel but as we stepped into the lobby, we saw the owner behind the counter. With a cockatoo on her shoulder. In the morning our car was dead and she let us stay hours late as it thawed enough to get going again.

Family time

I wish I had been aware enough to appreciate 1995 and 1986 more while I was living it. Having two babies was exhausting and I kept saying I’ve never been more exhausted or happier. I knew the kids would grow fast. Everyone warned us of that. What I didn’t know was how quickly we would start losing members of the family. For those brief years the generations met, we had the grandparents and cousins and babies and even our foster daughter still. Every precious moment I should have been holding them close but life is so fleeting. 
And maybe I’m being too harsh. I took a ton of photos. We drove thousands of miles. We made home videos. We went on trips together and in between those were phone call after phone calls, there was no shortage of love. We knew we were blessed. 

The Story of Us, Part 5

 

Being grown ups?

When I first asked Greg how old he was, he told me 12. And he was going to stay that way. (He was 18) then. Now 1989 but he and I finally, after 7 years in earning our 4 year college degrees, were entering the world of teaching. All grown up but possibly in denial. 

Our last year in college, we both were attending night classes, and student teaching full time at North Medford, Oregon High School. And so our hours at work for our minimum wage, fast food jobs were seriously cut back and we took out student loans to do that last year. Suddenly we were both hired to teach full time in the same district, by the coast, in the redwoods. We figured we’d stay about five years and pay off the loans and see where we ended up. 

But what a jump in income! From $4,500 dollars combined income for the year, we were hired at ten times that almost. $21,000 each plus an extra bonus of my teaching special education meant that each year for 5 years, 20% of my loans were forgiven and I never had to repay a cent. 

So we went bird brained. Greg had wanted a blue and gold macaw ever since watch Dr. Doolittle as a child. I got him two cockatiels, but he still bought himself the macaw when we walked into a pet store with one and My brother Lance was along. I asked what its name was and the store owner said, “whatever its new owner names it” and Lance leaned forward and said, “hi Becky. Becky, Becky, Becky Bird.”

We had rented a two bedroom duplex and had only three aquariums for pets. But before long we had 12 large parrots screaming inside our living room. Fortunately our neighbor, Ruby, never complained and was often gone overnight. 

We both liked teaching, he was doing classroom music for kindergarten through 8th grade, and I was teaching severely handicapped, 3-7 year old students. Summer school was only 5 weeks and several times if I took my kids on a field trip he came along. Then we often drove over 3,000 miles both summer and Christmas break going back to Wyoming and looping the perimeter of the state to visit family in three corners. 

My dad’s sister and her husband drove up from Anaheim, CA and my parents drove out from Wyoming. Through Utah, Idaho, and Oregon to us in CA. Both had about the same 1700 mile drive. 

My Aunt Rachel walked in the door and looked at those birds and gasped, “you seriously need to have a baby. Talk about misplaced maternal instincts.”

Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Germany

Summer of 1992, Greg had been singing with a Choir in the next county south, and signed up to tour four European countries. 
I came along. We did decide to get healthier before the trip and did a plan through our Dr. where we drank three meal replacement shakes and ate 8 ounces of meat and a salad each day. By the trip we had both lost about 40 pounds and we packed our luggage full of boxes of water and shake packets. All through The Netherlands, Poland, Denmark and Germany we ignored chocolates and breads and pasties. Were we Dumb? Absolutely. Still a huge regret. Idiotic and of course once we got home we fell off the diet anyway and gradually regained all the weight and more. 
But as we drank those medifast shakes we created luggage space for amber necklaces, lacework, matryoshka dolls and crystal bowls. Being pre Jurassic Park, we didn’t know what amber was until we wandered into an Alley lined with booths where every one sold amber carvings and jewelry. I even saw a huge Viking ship with chains where every link moved but were carved from a solid chunk of amber. 
We toured castles and the Berlin Wall, met two incredible tour guides, one on whom is still a dear friend. The chorale sang in cathedrals with massive organs and we saw legos and ceramics and stayed in fancy hotels and the homes of locals. I indulged in licorice and my heart stopping excitement at learning I was only a block from the Ten Boom Clock shop made me sneak away from the Haarlem Cathederal and run to see where Corrie Ten Boom had helped her family protect what Jewish people they could save, before all being captured themselves. She has always been my number one hero.

Tales from the dark side

OK, while we were living together, we had a few big fights, joking about red heads tempers and letting fly with targeted insults and actions. So by the time we got married, when Greg said, “just a warning, I won’t ever think about divorce,” and paused dramatically, before concluding, “murder maybe, but never divorce.” I was pretty confident that I could handle the worst he had to offer and that he loved me even at my worst. 
But we still had some doozies. I had been bullied as a child and was insecure and often afraid to admit to wanting to be included until I was specifically invited. So sometimes I stayed home when he went out just because he hadn’t said the right words to ask me. And my mom had similar memories, having told me once that she remembered her Dad asking her if she wanted to come along to the next town and she said, “no.” So he went without her. And she curled up on her bed and cried for the afternoon because she had definitely wanted to go, she had just wanted him to want her badly enough that he asked her again.
In my family we didn’t say what we wanted directly, often circling it in what my husband came to call Beightol-ese. My maternal side of my family would say, “I remember going to that ice cream shop up above Yellowstone.” And everyone knew to get in the car. But after 40 years of marriage my husband couldn’t figure out, or ignored, the times I pointed out a favorite place as we drove past. Then he couldn’t figure out why I was mad that he hadn’t turned around and gone in. 
This picture. Our first home together. He took the photo of me retrieving something from the trash. I’m not sure what it was that time, but I’m sure I threw it away, tore it up or something because of a moment of frustration I had no words to express. I threw my wedding ring away once and when he dug it out of the coffee grounds and washed it - threw it away again. Looking back I can’t even remember why but probably because he’d smoked a joint or had a margarita with friends. I had an unreasonable terror of anytime he had anything like that. And it became a test of “do you love me more than you need a drink.” And mind you, he wasn’t an alcoholic. I saw him hungover a few times before we were twenty and once he stuffed a baby food jar of marijuana in my lap when he was pulled over for speeding, but as college freshmen in 1982, he was nothing out of the norm. 
As we got older we argued less, and they were less volatile. Once I threw a plate at the door as he walked in at 1 in the morning from closing shift at Dominos pizza, and our downstairs neighbors jumped from their bed wondering what had woken them up. Once he stomped on my cassette tape because I ordered him to get it out of his car, because I wanted to play it in the house. A few times we screamed insults. I called him a “fuck head idiot” and after that he started signing love notes and birthday cards, “from your FHI” 
I always figured I would have divorced everyone else in my family at least once if that were a real, quick option, so I just pretended it wasn’t an option in marriage either. 

The Story of Us, part 4

 

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. 

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. 

photo 4999

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.