They Lived Happily...

My parents celebrated their 58th anniversary this week. Their courtship was outrageous.

A dashing seventeen-year-old named Roy Smith broke his left leg playing centerfield for the church baseball team. Stuck in traction at the hospital for six months, he grew even more ornery.

A girl from the congregation took the new nursing students to midweek prayer meeting—they stopped off so Mary could ask if Roy wanted to send the church a message. (Go to church. you never know what God has planned for that trip!)

Once Mary and the new gals left, Daddy asked the nurse on duty about one of the student's name. Elvera Gering. He promptly announced, “I’m going to marry that girl.”

Mom’s response when someone blabbed? “Over my dead body.” This was, of course a mature response. After all, she was an older woman--eighteen, don'tcha know!

He went home on crutches and lay in a bed in the dining room for several more months. Mom agreed to their first date, “because I felt sorry for him. He’d been cooped up for so long.” Over the next year, she was just as likely to turn down his requests for dates as she was to accept them. He’d tell her if she didn’t go, he’d take Gracie. “Go right ahead. Take her.” He did.

A year after he met her, Roy stopped by to see Elvera. This time she was in a hospital bed with appendicitis. As he left, he asked if she’d like a kiss. Then he tossed her a saltwater taffy kiss.

He went away to college. She didn’t write him often enough, so he mailed her a weekly college newspaper with only, “HI” written in the margin… and sent it postage due.

Believe me--these are mere examples of the spirited and stubborn way they've conducted their life-time courtship.

They got engaged. The Korean Conflict started, and Roy called Elvera en route to San Diego, California. The US Navy needed x-ray technicians and snatched him up. (No, Mom didn't know Dad was going. En route from Hutchinson, Kansas to San Diego, California he called to tell her he'd left. On leave between boot camp and deployment, they got married.

*Dad was twenty. His father had to sign for him to get the marriage license.

*Mom married Dad. (Lots of us can say that.)
*As the minister, my grandfather officiated.
*On Mother’s Day.
*And Dad’s sister was their flower girl. She was 6 weeks old when he broke his leg--and a very darling 3 year-old for the wedding.

If I wrote all that in a book, I’d be accused of constructing something totally unbelievable. Truth really is stranger than fiction.

But their relationship has passed the test of time.

58 years, 3 children, and 2 houses later, they are still crazy about one another.
Dad still calls Mom “Dear” and “Honey.”

(I didn’t learn Mom’s name until I was six or so.)

Mom calls him “Sweetheart.”

And they’re more in love every day.

“She is the love of my life—my dear, dear Lord and my dear, dear wife. I couldn’t ask for more.”

Is it any wonder I write Christian Romance? Or that there's humor in it?

Cathy