And The Two Became One

Part Two

Being away from my parents at 16 should have been traumatic because I had been away from them only one time for pleasure and twice of necessity. One was when Mother needed surgery and the other time was when Daddy broke his leg and was in hospital for some time. I stayed with my aunt and uncle once and with my grandmother the other time. For pleasure, I visited a cousin in Paris, TX at age 14. Even on that visit, at night I would hide a strong emotion of wanting to be home and extremely regretful of agreeing to the trip in the first place.  Now, I was married and thoughts of wanting to go ‘home’ never entered my mind. I did miss my home, my sister and parents, but, in my mind, the new world I had entered was strange, exciting, happy… my world.  While I had known Ed one year, and he was now only 18, my confidence in him was so complete, it left no room for worry or fear. Indeed, my dreams looked through the years, knowing the two of us would never be whole without the other. I was not smart, or wise, or especially intelligent, and so to this day I wonder how those thoughts could be mine.

After we married and left, someone in our families decided they would give us a shower in absentia.  Ed purchased a bedroom suit and Maxine’s husband did the same, but when the truck came loaded with gifts from our families, we received quilts, linens, dishes, cooking utensils, and silverware. Maxine and I were elated to have, not only the gifts we needed, but also the obvious good will and blessing of our families.

We learned to purchase food for the kitchen; well, I learned because Ed knew how and helped me to make a list of what I would cook. Believe me, the list of things I could cook was small. I was good with beans, potatoes, cornbread, biscuits, bacon, eggs, and chocolate pie. On the pie, I was a little better than good. It was my mother’s recipe and it became my husband, then my sons, favorite desert.  My five men loved desert so this spoke well of the pie.

One day in November, Maxine and I found a recipe for a chocolate cake. We had everything for it so we went by directions and had two nice layers of cake. Suddenly we knew we were missing something and the lack of icing stared us in the face. We discussed it thoroughly, sitting at the little dining table, going over every option. This discussion did not take long because the options were few. We did not have a recipe for frosting, or if we did, we did not know it.

We opened the refrigerator and stood staring at the contents as if awaiting an answer to surface.  That is when we knew we did not know what to do and as we stood there, my eyes fell on the jar of mustard. We both agreed brown and yellow were classic in ‘going together,’ so with a sigh of relief, we grabbed the jar and iced first layer. After positioning the second layer atop the first, we used the rest of the mustard, both commenting on the perfect consistency of the ‘icing.’ We set it in the middle of the table, and continued preparing supper for the boys. There was only one logical ending to this event; we endured the boy’s laughter while trashing the cake.  That was when I learned Ed did not like mustard on a cake or otherwise. He never liked it.

We heard “Gone With The Wind “ was playing at the theater and decided to go. Our mode of travel was his bicycle, and I sit right in front of him sideways. A delightful way to ride, don’t you think?  Anyway, the movie lasted 4 hours and I walked out crying as if Rhett Butler had directly snarled at me, ‘frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ After sympathizing with me 2 minutes, saying it was a movie, it was not real, he began laughing at me and I shut up. That was our first viewing of the movie and the last.

I had one sister. We did not wrestle, and I did not grow up in the company of children, and certainly no boys.  I learned my husband would wrestle with me, even though I did not know how. He was the fourth boy in his family of five brothers and they did wrestle and/or ‘roughhouse’ On a frigid December Saturday we started playing… he would blow in my ear and I would go into hysteria. When I started to fall, he put his arm behind my head.  When my head hit his arm, actually, his wrist, it broke his nice watch but my head was okay. When I got up I was trying to apologize for destroying his watch, I could see the watch was not a problem but revenge was. I knew he was coming to get me. I started laughing and he did, too, but he headed my way and there was nowhere to hide. I was barefooted in my underwear and it was cold. Nevertheless, I grabbed my coat, and ran, putting it on while I ran out the door and around the block.  We both laughed so hard that day it nearly made us sick.

We were in our house only a few weeks when we both awoke at midnight and we were hungry. I do not remember how the four of us were all awake, but we decided to go to the near-by drive-in for a hamburger. We piled into the 1932 Chevrolet, giggling insanely, and took off to the drive in that stayed open most of the night. Business places kept strange hours those days due to the influx of people and the work that continued around the clock. Maxine and I were in a robe…, the boys were properly dressed. We did that several times and the sound of our laughter sometimes echoes in my heart.  It was a long, long time ago.

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