My parents have one of the most incredible love stories of all time.
While I am with them this week, I wanted to get their story in print for all of you to hear.
Late one night…
Me: So, Dad…when did you first see Mama?
Dad: Well, the first time I remember seeing her was in Star City at a youth rally…she was hanging out with some of her friends. They sat about midway on the right side at the church and they all had on big skirts…but hers was just special.
Mama: My skirt was?
Dad: But I fell in love with her at first sight. She was beautiful. I was 9 years old.
Mama: Sounds like he fell in love with my skirt.
Dad: She didn’t know I existed, so I had to go drown my sorrows on Sis. Carrington’s sloppy joes.
This is a picture of my parents and my dad’s brother.
Guess which one is my dad?
The little one on the right.
Me: So you were 9…how old was she?
Mama: 14
Me: Do you remember seeing him that night?
Dad: She didn’t know I was in the world.
Me: When did you realize he was in the world?
Mama: I remember seeing him because we went to a lot of youth rallies. I remember thinking he was a cute little boy with pretty blue eyes and a great smile.
Dad: From the time I saw her that night…and seeing her in different towns at the different church events…I knew that I loved her. We moved to Pine Bluff (her town) when I was 13.
Mama: His dad became my pastor then. Were you 12? You would ride your bicycle as hard as you could to my house…
Dad: Well, we moved in late 1961, so still 12…
Mama: That’s right.
Dad: I liked being around her a lot. I’d go over there on my bicycle…we lived just a few streets over…so I’d ride my bicycle over there to see her. And the night she graduated from high school, I rode my bicycle over to the school to see her graduate.
Mama: Do you remember sitting on the back steps?
Dad: Oh yes, I do. I remember her cute little feet. I touched her toe. I fell in love with her feet.
Dad: She and Larry were pretty good friends. (His older brother) That irritated me. He had a car. He didn’t want me around when he was talking to her. I can remember one time they were sitting out on the sidewalk and every time I’d walk over there to be with you, he’d chase me off.
We laugh.
Mama: That night you put snowballs all over me. I went home and learned to “block a sweater.” It was a real cute sweater set. They kept putting them down my back…both of them fighting for my attention, I guess..in their own way…
Me: There’s more to that story that we won’t go into…
Mama: Mmhmm.
Mama: Dad was also there the night after I was put in the hospital after I got married…
Dad: She got married the year after we moved to Pine Bluff.
Me: So you married someone else…what did you do, Dad, when she got married?
Dad: I went to the wedding.
Mama: He was worried about me.
Mama: My daddy would tell me, “David’s in love with you.” I’d say, “No, Daddy, he’s just a kid!”
Me: So you got married and things didn’t go well.
Mama: To say the least. Things were bad.
I’ll insert here that my mom was in an abusive marriage. We won’t go into all the details, but it was a horrible situation and thankfully, she got out. She was 3 months pregnant with my brother when she left.
Dad: I have to say some of these things aren’t my favorite memories.
Me: What did you do when you found out she’d been mistreated?
Dad: Well, I never had liked *&^%$ much. I couldn’t believe that anyone could mistreat her.
Me: You went home to your parents house, right?
Mama: Yes. I went right back to where I had been…at home. But went back different.
Me: So, when Troy was born..you were in Dad’s church and close to his parents…
Mama: The funny thing is they called me “Aunt Kay”…they all did.
Me: Dad did?
Mama: Yeah, Dad did too.
Me: So when Troy was born, how old would you have been?
Dad: Oh…15…
Me: Did you want to make a move then to let her know how you felt?
Dad: When Troy was born? No, I can’t say that I wanted to make a move. It was like it was never going to happen. I went to see her when she had Troy.
Me: There’s pictures of you with Troy, I know you weren’t dating Mama then…but…
Dad: Troy, from the time he was a toddler…walking and all that, I spent a lot of time with him, just the two of us. He liked to ride in my Bug. We liked to hang out together.
Mama: He’d take him home with him Sunday after church and bring him back Sunday night. He loved Troy long before we were in love.
My mom worked at the hospital six days a week and was going to night school five nights a week for two years. My dad was going to school a couple hours away and didn’t have a car at first. He would hitchhike to see her…he wanted to tell her how he felt, but didn’t for a long time.
Mama: Troy was 4 years old when we started dating. Mama and Daddy were in California and Troy and I were by ourselves decorating for Christmas. David came over and wanted to help decorate the tree.
Me: Was anything said that night about him liking you?
Mama: No, we were just really good friends. I went in to make hot cocoa and he swooped in and kissed me.
Me: So that’s how you made your move? You swooped in and kissed her?
Dad: Mmhmm.
Me: Did she kiss you back?
Dad: Nope
Mama: Huh? I didn’t? What did I do?
Dad: She gave me the evil eye. I tried to kiss her one more time and she wouldn’t…but I came back…not that night, but a couple nights later.
Me: Why did you keep trying?
Dad: Just persistent.
Me: Did you think she liked you more than she knew?
Dad: No. I didn’t.
We laugh.
Mama: I wasn’t playing hard to get. I wouldn’t even go to a restaurant at that point with him…once I knew. I felt awkward because he was my friend and I was five years older!
Dad: Our first date…I finally got her to go to The Casanova…Troy went with us.
Mama: I was just very hard to get. I wouldn’t tell him I loved him even after I knew I was in love with him.
Dad: It was a long time. I told her I loved her pretty early on.
Mama: I didn’t want to get married again either.
Me: Divorce just wasn’t done back then.
Mama: No. There was a stigma with it. I was treated well, but…&^%$# damaged my self esteem, but what happened later destroyed it.
Dad: I was beginning to make a little progress, but by the time Mema and Paka (her parents) got back, Mema kinda got onto me a little bit.
Mama: I didn’t know that. She did?
Dad: She was surprised. Paka wasn’t surprised. But she was. She fussed at me a little bit. She didn’t try to stop us either, but wanted to know what I was doing.
Mama: They kinda got in trouble for not discouraging it.
Dad: Mema and Paka realized what was going on, but no one else did. For one thing, Mama never gave me any encouragement. She didn’t want to acknowledge even liking me.
Me: When did she co
me around?
Mama: Oh, let’s see. I guess one thing that makes it so hard to talk about is all the hurt…we changed churches. It was hard. It wasn’t accepted. After we were serious, his mom came and asked me to break up with him.
Dad: They took the car. They didn’t want me to be with her. I stopped going home and stayed at school or would come home from school with a friend.
Me: How old were you at this point?
Dad: 19. I promised my mom that I wouldn’t get married until I was 21. So I kept my promise. I told them they couldn’t tell me who to love or who to marry, but then he locked me out of the house. I hitchhiked back to school. It was a mess. We couldn’t talk about it.
Mama: I broke up with him the night she came and asked me to. He came flying over when he found out. I didn’t even know he was coming, but there he was.
Dad: She wrote a letter to break up with me. After I came…after I got the letter…we talked on the front steps until 1 in the morning. Mema told me later that she knew after seeing us talking on the steps that it was real…that we loved each other.
Mama: What was odd about their rationale was that it wasn’t about my divorce..it was because I was older than him. I could see why they’d think it about my divorce and having a child…but it was about me being older. That was the big thing.
Me: So how long was it after the break up before you got engaged?
Dad: I didn’t go along with the break up.
Mama: Trying to break up with him…get out and be done with it…I didn’t want to be part of it anymore. I went to Dallas by myself and looked for a job. I ended up getting a job. I came home and my lawyer talked to me. He scared me about leaving the jurisdiction. *&^%$ was married again by then and his wife was even writing me letters by then threatening to take Troy from me. The lawyer said, “Stay here and I’ll protect you.”
Me: So what did you do?
Mama: So I turned it down and stayed where I was. I stayed and we went through a bunch of stuff.
Me: When did you get engaged?
Dad: Early 1970.
Mama: I think early March or April. We got married the 26th of June.
Me: How did you ask her to marry you?
Dad: I practically begged her for a couple of years. I practically NEVER got her to say that she loved me. It wasn’t a dramatic moment, but I got down on my knee and asked her to marry me. I don’t remember her being overjoyed even then.
Mama: I didn’t say “Yes” that night. I sat on the floor after he left, with my head in my Mama’s lap and cried. She prayed with me all night long.
Me: You were just so scared to get married again.
Mama: All the trauma. I didn’t want to get married again and yet, I loved him. Just scared.
Dad: For one thing, I was going to join the Air Force. I wanted to be a pilot, but I flunked the eye exam. I would have gone in as an Officer, but was going in as a Navigator, with the hope to eventually get the right glasses to still fly. I was supposed to be sworn in that Tuesday and the Saturday before, I had a car wreck. I was knocked unconscious for about five minutes, so they wouldn’t take me, period.
Mama: And he knew he would be drafted if he didn’t enlist.
Dad: Vietnam.
Dad: The wedding was just a small affair. We had to battle to be together from the get-go. It was just our brothers and sister and Troy.
Mama: He loved Troy like he was his own all along.
Me: Troy was 6 by then…
Mama: Mema and Paka would keep him while I worked. I was scared to leave their house. I was still afraid that Dad would leave.
Dad: In March, I was drafted into the Army and had to go to San Antonio. I took my medical records from the Air Force, but they said it didn’t matter there. They stamped my papers and I was in the Army.
Mama: It took me forever to take Troy to meet him in San Antonio. And when we did, Troy was so homesick for Mema and Paka. We had lived with them for the first six years of his life.
Me: What did he think when you married Dad?
Mama: Well, he was crazy about him all along, so he was excited. Our first night together in our apartment he said, “Now I have a real live Daddy.”
Me: Oh man. When did you adopt Troy?
Mama: When he was 15, Dad adopted him. He had to be old enough to make his own decision.
Me: That’s quite the story.
Mama: I don’t think you’ll ever find a truer love, though, Lori. All of it was bittersweet. It all is, but the love…
They’ve been married for 39 years…”Come June,” my dad adds.
Dad: We still love our ‘chothers.
Me: And I came along a couple years later…
They both smile.
This has been a hard subject to write about. What I don’t know if I can portray is how much they love each other. They still hold hands all the time. I have never seen my dad leave the house, even to go outside to mow, without first kissing my mother. He still pats her bum when she walks by and she giggles. They talk~ you know how you go in restaurants and you see couples sitting there not speaking~ that will never be my parents. They still have plenty to talk about. They have shown me the best example of married life.