My parents were married on April 3. Dad passed away in 1973, but the date remains important to our family. Of course.

My mom is a loyal reader of this blog. (What would we do without friends and family, anyway?) It seems right to congratulate her here.

Dad was a loving and brilliant man. I know my mom was hoping to have smart kids… and marrying Dad helped that dream a bit. Mom didn’t know until decades later that she also was a smart cookie in her own right, and we got our good minds from both parents. Isn’t it sad how that happens to so many of us women?

My Dad only was ever married once, to my mom. As they turned 40, many of Dad’s colleagues were “trading in their wives for a newer model,” in his words.

Dad liked to joke a lot. At parties, my father would introduce my mom as “this is my first wife, Liz.” Mom would say “Pete is my most recent husband.” They would laugh about sticking together, which was not always easy.

Mom and Dad were married 18 years when he died at age 40. I know he is still a part of my everyday life. I take after his mother in temperament, as did he and his brothers.

A favorite memory of family life while we still had Dad, was when we would drive from Michigan to Minnesota every summer to visit relatives. (All four of us were born in Minnesota, and more than half our relatives were there.) We would sing in the car much of the trip.

We would sing songs with place names in them. When we passed through Gary, Indiana, we would sing the song about it from The Music Man. Then we would sing Oklahoma! from that musical, and The Yellow Rose of Texas, and any other song we could think of about cities or states.

We sang “Shine on, Harvest Moon” and “For Me and My Gal” which I then thought were two parts of one long song, but we apparently did them as a medley (probably learned that way from a record at one time). Now Brian and I sing those songs. If you click the links above, you can hear us singing them as MP3s, if your computer is set up for that.

Happy Anniversary, Mom.

Related posts:

1. Happy 50th Anniversary
2. My Dad Loved Me
3. The Days are Getting Longer!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 12:12 pmand is filed under Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.