Celebrating Love – My Parent’s 71st Anniversary

*I wrote this a week ago today. And then life happened and it got lost in the shuffle, which is crazy since it was the biggest event of the month, year, even perhaps this life of mine. My parents deserve celebration every day.*

May 12, 2021

Today is my mom and dad’s 71st anniversary. On this day in 1950, my dad borrowed $2 from Myrtle Mae Ayres, his soon-to-be mother-in-law, so that he could pay the Baptist preacher, a man folks around Porter, New Mexico called “Brother Arnold.” That spring morning, he and my mom, along with his niece Gwen (who was only a year younger than Dad) and her sweetie, went to the preacher’s house and had a double wedding.

 I’ve been telling my colleagues for the past week that this milestone was coming up. “Next Wednesday is my mom and dad’s 71st anniversary,” I’ll say.

I say it knowing that the response is always that this sort of longevity is quite a feat. And then there’s this from people who don’t know them: “Wow Bunny, how old are your parents? Are the in their nineties?”

Then I get to tell the fun part of the story, that no, they’re not in their nineties because they married so young. My mom was not quite sixteen, my dad not quite eighteen and in his last month of high school.

It Was Practically Love at First Sight

They’d known each other forever. Mom’s sister was married to Dad’s brother. They went to the same small farming community school where my dad played on the baseball team that was headed to the state tournament the next weekend.

Dad says he asked Mom to marry him and she said yes, but with a caveat. “You have to ask Papa.”

My Grandpa Ayres was a man of few words. In fact, his silence is the stuff of family legend. My dad tells a story of Sunday lunch, twenty years after Dad joined the family, where Grandma set a piece of cherry pie on the table in front of Papa.

 “Frank always gets the first piece of cherry pie. It’s his favorite,” she’d say. In the same way she always said it, Sunday after Sunday for decades, as long as anyone can remember. On that day, my grandpa, Benjamin Franklin Ayres, stared at the pie for a minute and then said, “I’ve never really liked cherry pie.” 

When Dad nervously approached him about marrying the 15-year-old Betty Terry, Papa considered it quietly. And then said, “She finishes high school.”

Kenneth Terry, a man of many words, tried to insert a dozen reassurances about taking care of Betty, loving her always, getting her through school. And then Papa repeated himself, perhaps using up all his words for the day. “She finishes high school.”

Which she did the next year, a pregnant valedictorian giving her graduation speech four months before my sister was born.

And they lived happily ever after. At least that’s what it looked like to me. They are still openly affectionate, still one another’s best friend. 

71 Years Later They’re More in Love Than Ever

They’re in love, deeply connected and considerate of each other. They like each other, which is a gift and example to all the rest of us.

There’s a sad story within the bigger joyous one. When my dad and Gwen’s husband Jerrell went into school the following Monday, the baseball coach informed them they couldn’t play in the state championship game.

 “Sorry boys, but you can’t travel with the team now that you’re married. Just wouldn’t look right.”

So, my dad missed out on his chance to spend a night in Albuquerque.  And the Porter Dragons lost in the first round of the tournament.

A couple of years ago my nephew Kene, who owns a t-shirt company, created a special design for Dad and the rest of us, a gray tee with a purple Porter Dragons Baseball logo.

 I think I’ll wear my Porter Dragon tee today, in celebration. Thanks for checking in.