45 Years

In honor of our 45^th Anniversary month (Yes Month, It’s a new thing) I wanted to write some thoughts.

You all know that I met your Mom while she was working the day shift at Farrell’s . I’ve also related that prior to asking her out, I took another Farrell’s girl on a weekend trip and your Mom needed to cover her shifts. Nice lady your Mom was. At that time I wasn’t sure she knew I existed, but I did know someone helped by covering the shifts.

Then I did take more notice of her, and asked her out. No dice, she was busy. Ok I thought, I’ll try again later. I asked her out again. No, sorry, she was busy. I was a beginning to think that this girl just wasn’t interested in spending time with me. It happens, oh way more than once. Waited a bit and tried for one last (and I can’t say for certain, but really likely it would have been THE last) attempt, and she agreed to go with me on a full day’s car rally. Mom will need to relate why she finally agreed, and reserved the date, as I learned later, she would have been busy that day as well.

So a six hour time and distance rally is an interesting first date. Constant interaction between the two of us, but a long way from any sweet nothing talk. “Speed is 28, we’re looking for a right handed lazy T”, all day long! At least we had a table and some pizza at the end of the day. It was a trial by fire, do I like being with this person time. She was a darned good sport for jumping into this intense, and a little stressful time with me.

So other dates came about, and during this time your Mom moved from her parents’ house to a shared home near the zoo. One of her house mates didn’t like me very much. Hard to imagine, I know, but true. Seemed this lady felt the need to fill the role of critical parent to Carol.

I worked to impress your Mom by helping to un-stick a painted shut window to get more air into the house. Amazing how fragile 80 year old glass can be. So I changed tactics and impressed her by replacing the glass in an 80 year old window! I can adapt!

We spent some fun non date type stuff too. I remember taking a walk near her work to explore (trespass) through some apartments being built near the restaurant. We chatted out how the rooms were arranged and if we’d be ok in such a place. We were still pretty casual, but your Mom had slowly become my regular date.