I don’t remember how old I was when I went to my Aunt Dutch and Uncle Elmer’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, but I remember that it was held outside in their yard. They got lots of silver dishes, cards, some money, and one Barbie like doll dressed in dollar bills. I remember thinking that twenty-five years was a long time.
Several years later, after I started teaching, my parents celebrated twenty-five years too. My two sisters and I planned a surprise party and rented a hall. We didn’t have much money so the meal was a pot luck and the drinks were BYO. My two sisters, the girl I was dating at the time, Ruth, and I worked together on the party. I think that Mom, and for sure Dad, figured it out before it happened. All of their friends and family attended. My dad gave my mom a mink stole as a gift. (What guy brings a mink stole to a party that he doesn’t know is about to be thrown?)
In 1995 my parents celebrated fifty years of marriage. They had a big party in a rented hall. There was a lot of food and dancing. Once again, lots of friends and family attended. My dad’s health was declining so we were happy that he was still around for the event. My mom did her best version of a seductive dance for him as a part of the festivities. I remember thinking that fifty years passes in the blink of an eye. Where does the time go?
The following year Ruth and I (The same Ruth from my parent’s twenty-fifth anniversary surprise.) celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary. That’s half a blink by my count. There was no party. I don’t remember what we did but I expect that it was very simple. That’s how we celebrate our anniversaries, birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Sweetest Day, etc. On the DL (down low). We have each other and that seems to be all we need.
Five years later we celebrated thirty years of marriage and I remember that day very well. I expect that you do too. September 11, 2001 began like any other day. I was Superintendent of Britton-Macon and the Superintendent of Hillsdale, Rich Ames, came to see the new renovations to our school that had been completed the prior summer. While visiting classrooms we were told that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center in New York. The first report said that a private plane was involved. Shortly after that first report, the entire world knew better.
I called Ruth at home and she monitored the unfolding events on television. We knew that David was at work teaching and I told her that I would contact Elizabeth and Michael.
Elizabeth and her best friend, Jenny, were moving to San Diego. They had begun their trip a couple of days earlier. I knew that they were staying in a house just outside of Denver in Bailey, Colorado.. I called her and asked if she had heard about what had happened in New York. She hadn’t. I told her to turn on the television and stay where she was. “No one knows what’s going to happen next. Just stay where you are until we know more about the situation.”
Our youngest son, Michael, was working in Pittsburg and I became concerned for his safety when I heard that an airplane had crashed in western Pennsylvania. Pittsburg, Pennsylvania is about as far west as you can get. When I finally reached him on the phone, he was driving home from work. The Pittsburg airport was not far from his apartment. I’ll never forget his words. “Dad, I’ve never seen so many planes in the air at one time. They’re everywhere.”
Later that morning I spoke on the phone with Jim Hartley . Jim was Superintendent of Madison Schools. We had an athletic event that evening and discussed what we should do. We had plans for snow days, fire and tornado drills, school lockdowns, even gunmen in the building, but we didn’t have a plan for what to do when people hijack our airplanes and fly them into our buildings in our country. Jim and I spoke briefly and decided to send everyone home to be with their family after school was dismissed for the day.
That evening Ruth and I met David and our friends, Jim and Diane, for tacos at the Highland Beach Inn. The five of us had planned to meet for dinner, and we followed through with our plans. It was a quiet dinner celebration of our thirtieth anniversary.
Our family has seen many changes in the past seventeen years. All three kids are married now. I expect that David, Lindsay, Brady and Eva are home this evening. Ironically, in a flip of geography, Elizabeth and her husband, Sutton, stopped this morning at the memorial site of flight 93 that crashed in western Pennsylvania, and Michael and Kate are home in California. Everyone has contacted us and wished us well.
On the eve of posting my eighty-ninth story, Ruth and I just shared a quiet dinner at home. We have made it to forty-seven years. Only three more years until we reach our full blink of an eye celebration. I expect that it will be a quiet one.