The story of us. The beginning

 

Since 1982

For single shot April on a photo a day website I’ve posted in since 2011,  Instead of choosing one item like I have several previous Aprils, I chose one relationship. This is a repost of those thirty days, three days at a time. 

It began in 1982 when we were both first year students at Northwest Community College in Powell, Wyoming. I had noticed him the first semester in fall of 1981 but in January of 1982 he moved from his dormitory to his sister’s apartment in my hometown 30 miles away. I was taking evening classes and he was doing rehearsals for Godspell. He advertised in the daily hotline for someone to carpool with and I answered. That first drive home from the college in my mom’s brown mercury zephyr station wagon, I was nervous but he was easy to talk to. He patted my shoulder and told me to relax when I kept apologizing for how I drove. I thought he lived with his girlfriend because when I called to set up the carpooling, his sister answered, “This is April” and 43 years later I can still hear her voice and feel my heart fall. 

I’ve always been a visual person and I’ve filled the walks and bookshelves with pictures recording the life we created together. 

Music

When Greg and I first met, he was a chemistry major and I was an art major at a two-year college in Powell, Wyoming. But I was taking creative writing classes in the evening and he was taking theater and was one of the cast members singing “all good things” in Godspell. 
Music seem to surround everything we did. Because our first conversations happened while we were carpooling, there was usually the radio playing. Because he was rehearsing in a musical. He was often in humming or singing songs from Godspell. But the very first place I saw him was when a friend had invited me to watch her rehearse in the Northwest Singers Audition pop choir group. I didn’t sing, but I had grown up with the northwest singers coming to do concerts at my elementary and junior high and high school and I already loved that group.
By that time, Greg was living with his big sister April. The first time he invited me home, we walked in the door and he put on a Cat Stevens album, called Teaser and the Fire Cat, which includes peacetrain, and morning has broken, but my favorite was “how can I tell you.”
10 months later, we were living together and he had changed his major to music and theater. He said chemistry wasn’t challenging to him, but he loved the challenge of making good music in theater and I have to admit for 40 years. He has been wonderful at adding music, theater, drama, and delight to my life.

Love me, love my brother

When I graduated from High School you might think I would be eager to get away from the town where I had been bullied. But oddly I wasn’t. Maybe because I had found school to be filled with a lot of pain and danger, I wasn’t eager to see what else was out there. So I went to college as close to home as I could, and that meant I lived at home and rode 25 miles on a Jr. college school bus each morning and came home at five PM

The first semester was a period of more growth than I expected. People smiled at me and said “hi” between classes and I kept looking shyly around to see who they were talking to, and there would be no one but me around. It took time but I gradually realized that I did not have “loser” branded on my forehead and I started looking up beyond my shoes and smiling first.
Then I needed a class only offered in the evening when the bus didn’t run. I bravely called a number listed in the school’s hot line (a daily sheet of messages printed and hung on various bulletin boards by student services) looking to carpool for evening classes. And with that call, I changed my life.
The other student was also a tall, skinny redhead, and would become my life long best friend and partner in everything. My first graceful words to him were rude, “I never met a redhead I liked” but he was funny and gentle and rowdy and confident and he passed the biggest test of all. He loved my brother Lance as soon as he met him and was soon coming with gifts to visit Lance as much as to see me. My grandma adored him, and Mom informed me that if I ever broke up with him, the rest of the family was keeping him.
I never considered breaking up with him though, he made me see myself through his eyes and for the first time ever since my first day of first grade, I loved who I am.

30 Year Anniversary

Back in the 1981 - 1982 school year, I was a freshman at a junior college in Powell, Wyoming, still living with my prints and riding the shuttle bus to school every day 30 miles each direction.  I was geeky and awkward and had never had a boyfriend, but this one guy caught my attention. He looked a lot like me, and for awhile every time I looked up I would see him walking bowlegged and lanky like a cowboy, across the campus.  Then in January as the second semester started he began catching the shuttle bus too.  An enterprising friend of mine found his name, and even better, found an ad he had placed in the Hot-Line looking for someone to carpool with for the evening classes, and his play practice.

So I called, and arranged to give him a lift home on the days I had a late class, but I was crushed that a woman answered his phone, with a cheery, "This is April!"

Later I was much happier to learn that April was his12 year older sister, and that he had moved in with her and her husband after a semester in the dorms.

We had our first date driving to see a friend of mine playing piano at Pahaska TeePee at the gate to Yellowstone Park.  As we entered the bar, Greg was carded, but the woman looked at his ID, looked at me, and waved me in, "You are obviously twins."  So 18 year old me, enjoyed the music and some food and soda, and wondered hat she thought about the twins who kept kissing every few minutes.

By October of 1982, we were living together, which made Greg's mom and Dad relax because Greg was the youngest of 6 kids and they had seen several divorces from young marriages already.  It made my Mom and Dad cry and disown me for awhile, and then invite us bcd for my brother Lance's birthday.  He was 6 and has Down's Syndrome and was Mom's excuse, I knew "Lance Misses you." meant they all did.

In May of 1984, we were still living in Powell but packing to move to the Black Hills Playhouse in Cuter State Park for Summer jobs before moving to Ashland Oregon to continue beyond Jr. college.

On May 20th we went to the movie, "Footloose" with a friend, the twin sister of the Piano player actually, and then we went home and finished packing. The next day, on a whim, we looked at each other as we hauled boxes to storage and decided to get married. We went in for the required blood test and paperwork and then went to get my parents and brothers. We told them, "get in the car if you want to come to our wedding, or we'll get witnesses for a drink at the Silver Dollar."

The wedding was quick at the Justice of the Peace and three hours later, after dinner at the Chinese Restaurant, Greg called his parents and when his Mom, said, "Don't get married. You're too young, when are you thinking about getting married anyway?"  He had to answer, "Three hours ago."

These are our fancy wedding clothes. I'm pretty sure I even had cobwebs in my hair from storing moving boxes into Mom and Dad's basement

Dad, Me, Greg and my Brother, Brett

The Bride and Groom and Grandma Grace

Us, at the cabin in Custer State Park where we lived and worked at Blackhills Playhouse

3 years later as students of Beijing Teacher's College  1987

Moving to Crescent City and the Redwoods as new teachers in 1989

Our family in 1996

and at the campground 25 years after getting married

But here we are, Tomorrow will be our 30th anniversary, and we have been Grandparents of Daisy Grace for 3 and 1/2 weeks.  We'll teach all day and his music kids will have a concert that evening. So it won't be anything but a normal day and yet, those are the best, the everyday, curl up beside him at the end of another day of work and smile because he is still my best friend, my biggest headache, and the reason I love being me.

Men Like Greg, are rare

 My life isn't fair, and I have done nothing that could possibly have deserved this.
I know it. I recognize the fact.
Yet
I am thankful every day for November 26.

 It makes sense that November 26, is frequently Thanksgiving.
Greg was born then.
That is reason enough to be thankful.

 I don't know how many other people have been blessed to spend so much of their life
loving a man like him,
but I know he is one of the best human beings I have ever met or even heard of
and he will always do the thing that is right
over the thing that is easy
and he will know the most random facts
and look at them objectively
and he will know what a fool I can be
and love me always and all ways.

 He will be exhausted and not want to get up
but there he goes out the door to work
and if he is running a gas station
cooking and delivering pizza
camp counselor at a Easter Seals Camp
Set designer, director, teacher
or paint crew,

he will do his job as if it is the most important job in the world
and treat the people he comes into contact with as if they are all important

 He notices when some stranger looks hungry and buys them a meal
or if a door is too heavy for some one struggling to get into a store
or if an animal is injured
and he tries to help.

 And he never forgets to play
and to stay about "12 mentally"

 He is brave enough to force me out of my safety zone on multiple occasions and fun enough to make me enjoy it.

 And when I introduced him to my brother with Down's Syndrome I watched him like a hawk to make sure he was able to pass the most important test of all, but no problem.  He loved Lance and Lance still adores him.

 When his big sister died, he wasn't ashamed to cry, and when my Dad was dying, he was there to be strong.  When I never knew what I needed he always did.  The first time my parents came to visit, and I sobbed like a baby when the left, He took me camping

 When my Dad died and we were 1300 miles away he took me to the beach and let me cry until the salt on my face was more tears than spray.

 He cares about his parents, siblings, children and friends with a depth and an honesty I had never seen before.  Not that the men in my family didn't love their family, but they might pat your head, not gave you the kind of open honest feelings my husband makes so easy.  In fact he taught my whole family to express themselves more lovingly just by hanging out with them and saying "I love you" until no one could doubt it

I told him I'd love him and grow old with him.  I know I will. But I also know I was too proud, and too scared and too stupid to have made it this long, without him always being more interested in repairing the relationship than in being right.

Thank God for men like Greg in the world.

Happy Birthday.