My parents started "dating" when they were in the sixth grade at Power Elementary under the watchful eye of my aunt Sara Catherine, who ran the cafeteria, and her husband Luther was the favorite of everybody in daddy's generation, which was all boys except for two hold-outs.
From sixth grade until the day daddy died, neither of them had ever been involved with anyone else. It's been my mission to make up for all the romantic gregarity daddy missed out on. I may have invented a word. Meriam Webster is telling me there's no such form of gregarious as gregarity. I'll never be recognized for my genius in my generation.
When Daddy died, Momma was on vacation with my cousin Libby in Florida, they chose to drive, even though we had a plane and Libby worked for Delta. (my family can be odd.) There were carphones in those days, but Momma refused to get one. They were intrusive, she felt. She was probably right. She also confused Cell Phones with the Radio Phone that Rowan Taylor had, and somebody with a police scanner caught him calling a judge an asshole, so he never trusted them again.
As they entered Alabama, Libby called daddy's office to let him know they'd be home in x number of hours. She was transferred to James Carr, who told her what happened but not to tell Mother until she got back to Jackson. He thought that'd be better than her sitting all that time in a car thinking about how her life had suddenly changed.
Back at home, the house was filling up with Ole Miss KA's, Millsaps people, and whatever family we could find. Robert Wingate drove to Jackson from Greenwood and waited for momma to get home. Of all my relatives, Wingate always was. He just was. Poor Libba Wingate. How many times did Robert have to say, "I gotta go." then disappear into the night. He was just that kind of guy. God, I miss him.
As she drove up to our house on Honeysuckle, Mother saw all these cars. She immediately assumed something had happened to one of her children, probably me. She'd lived through this with other families before. Turning in the driveway, the headlights lit up Leon Lewis and Brum Day. Mr. Lewis might have been there if I died in a wreck, but once she saw Brum, she knew what it had to be. Her fifty-year love affair had come to an end.
Fifty years is a long time. So far, twelve years is the longest I've gone with the same person. I think what made their relationship work was that they had a genuine sense of humor about each other.
One time, Mother got real sick with an intestinal thing and had to spend six days at St. Dominics. People from all over brought daddy all these casseroles so he wouldn't starve, even though he and Rowan ate steak every night. Daddy only knew how to cook one thing, and I had to teach him how to do that correctly. The casseroles began to stack up. He gave me one, and I think Jimmy got one.
Finally, momma came home. She gave me instructions on how to heat up one of the casseroles stacked in her refrigerator, and we ate as a family for the first time since she got sick. Martha was still living at Millsaps, but the rest of us all had our own places. Eating the Mexican something, something casserole Jane Lewis made, Daddy said, "If you'd been sick a little longer, somebody woulda made me a caramel cake." He got away with it. My wife woulda made sure I wore whatever was left of the something, something Mexican casserole, but then we didn't start dating when we were ten years old.
Mother wasn't the type to let anyone get the better of her. She took to the habit of leaving daddy a birthday card on his lavatory every year. He would read it, kiss her on the head and say how much he loved it, then leave it back on his lavatory as he went to work. That night, he'd come home and take her out to eat, usually at the Mayflower, and we kids were at the mercy of Hattie the maid, or my grandmother, both of which were excellent cooks. Noticing that Daddy did the same thing every year without deviation of any sort, Mother decided to try something.
She took to collecting the birthday card he left on the lavatory and tucking it away in her desk. The next year, she'd leave the same card on the same lavatory where he would read it, kiss her on the head, then take her out for dinner. This went on for most of my youth. The same card, the same ritual, year after year. Finally, in my twenties, she was lubricated enough at a dinner party that she revealed the rouse to her friends. Daddy turned a little red-faced for a minute, realizing he'd been caught not really noticing the card she picked out all those years was always the same one. Then, he sheepishly offered, "still counts." And, so it did.
Playing tricks on each other can be good for a relationship. A sick wife really should be worth a caramel cake. You can even buy them at the store now. Obviously, I don't know the secret to true love, but I think maybe being able to laugh at each other helps.
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