I thought it was appropriate that I finally join the writing exercise that I continually say is so important. For me, writing is a difficult, time consuming process. I seem to never have time, but I want to do this. So rather than worrying about creating something that is perfect, I’m going to concentrate on just getting something down. And here it is.
Gail’s topic brought several things to mind and I wanted to get it all in the post. First of all, I’ve attached a recording I made with my father on his 74th birthday last summer (07/28/06). It’s not a great recording, but the first 30 seconds he talks about the first time he saw my mother. I must have heard this story a million times during my life and I’m so glad I have it preserved. The remainder of the recording is really responses to questions I asked him – Did you see Mom around town when you were a kid? Did you have a car to go on dates? It’s great to hear his voice. My mother was on the couch with him when we recorded it and you can hear her voice in the background.
In addition, I wanted to include several memories that I have of Valentine's Day. My father grew up in a small area of Phenix City known as Girard. In Girard, it was a custom each year to do something called “throwing valentines”. This basically amounted to dropping a Valentines card at someone’s door, knocking on the door and then running to hide. He apparently did this every year as a child and when my brother and I were five or six, he decided to introduce us to the practice.
It sounded like great fun and my brother and I were very excited about it, but the problem was that we didn’t live in Girard. The first neighbor that came to the door didn’t see anyone, quickly walked away and returned with a pistol. That was our first and only attempt at “throwing Valentines”. At my father’s memorial service two weeks, I actually heard someone mention the practice again and it made me member it.
I guess my most memorable Valentine's Day was in the fifth grade (1972 or 73 – I’m too lazy to calculate the date). It started sleeting while we were on the school bus and when I got off, I slipped and fell on the ice. Of course, everyone there thought that was the funniest thing they had ever seen. It was pretty unusual to have ice on the ground because sleet never really lasted in south Alabama. But this time it did and about 30 minutes later it started to snow. By midmorning it was falling down in huge white chunks. My fifth grade teacher was rather strict, but she eventually saw no school work was going to happen and allowed us to go play in the snow. For those accustomed to it, snow isn’t anything special and more often just a nuisance. But for those of us who rarely see it, it’s a wonder. We threw snow balls and rolled each other in for almost an hour. My hands were absolutely frozen when we finally wandered back into class. We were all soaked to the bone and we sat in front of the old steam radiator at the back of the class until we thawed out. We ended up getting almost 16 inches of snow and four days out of school was about the best Valentine's Day present a kid could ever ask for.
I’ll leave you with one parting Valentine's Day thought that my Dad once told me. He said the day he married my mother was the second best day of his life. He paused and then continued… The very best day of his life was the day after the wedding when he realized that he would get to wake up next to my mom for the rest of his life. We should all be so lucky.