25 years ago today I married a nice, funny, 23 year old man. He was smart and cute. A little too skinny but I figured I could work on that. He made me laugh. A lot. And he thought I was pretty but he was gentleman enough to keep his hands to himself. I was 21 and knew I'd hit the jackpot.
I still have the price tag that was on my Laura Ashley gown. 375.00.
For 5 years we played the yuppies. I had a great job at a hospital, which paid the bills and put Joey through aircraft mechanics school. Our rent was 265.00 a month until we took the leap and upgraded to a two bedroom apartment in the hip Hollywood neighborhood of Portland for a whopping 425.00. We ate out at restaurants a lot, went to the beach whenever, and shopped at Nordstrom because that's what yuppies did. We did this for about 3 years before we started talking about babies.
Two miscarriages and 1 round of fertility pills later (plus 9 months, 2 weeks) along came our Olivia. People thought we were crazy to give her such an old fashioned, out of style name. Turns out we were cutting edge after all. She was a sweet, easy baby and I was utterly perplexed about how to manage a home but I was determined to stay home and figure it out. I decorated and renovated our beautiful 1924 house which we'd paid a whopping 59,900.00 for in 1991 and Olivia kept me company. We had a lot of fun together and fortunately she can't remember all of my fumbling attemps to figure our new life out.
Joey was working as an aircraft mechanic for Horizon Airline (where they would joke "if the meatball's on the tail...go by rail" because the logo looked like a meatball) and going to school to get his FCC license so he could move into avionics where it was dry and warm and he might have a chance for the day shift.
(someone had mistakenly told me I was an "Autumn" so I was doomed to wear the wrong colors until I figured it out on my own)
Meanwhile, were so smitten with our sweet, smiling girl that we were determined to have another as soon as possible. 22 months later we were tickled to get a dark, furry baby girl (I'd married an Italian and I wanted dark babies darnit!). Turns out this one wasn't going to be nearly as sweet and smily as her big sister. Pietra squealed and turned every shade of red for the first year and when we weren't pulling our hair out we were laughing our heads off at her cynical, suspicious stares. At this point I had started sewing again so Joey's the only one in the picture with store bought clothes. You can see I'm holding Peety's arm down to keep her thumb out of her mouth for this picture. Man, she needed that thumb.
(This was a Vogue dress pattern on the girls and I probably made it 20 times, so classic and dainty)
Things were swimming along just fine and then we got the crazy idea to uproot and move to Arizona so Joey could go to flight school. We sold our sweet home for more than double what we'd paid for it and took our girls and our cat to Arizona. In August. We'd just left the rain and moved to the scorch. Oh well, we knew it was only temporary so we figured we could handle it.
We bought a decent little ranch house in an okay neighborhood and plowed ahead with our lives. 3 more miscarriages, back on the fertility pills and along came girl number 3. Perfect. I was finished. Sofia was cute, dimpled, and healthy. Her sisters were smitten. What more could we ask for?
(apparently I should've asked for the ability to alter a pattern so that my blouse could fit across my big old nursing boobs but not droop off of my shoulders. I know how to fix that now but this picture has always bugged me).
Flight school tanked, we sold our house to pay off the debt, moved to an apartment, and Joey went to work at Honeywell. We found out our insurance didn't cover vasectomies so, not wanting to hand Joey's vittles over to the lowest bidder, we decided to save up for the procedure.....um... Another miscarriage and then, what the heck? A boy? Asher. Neither of us had had brothers so this was going to be something new for everyone. Why was he grunting so much? Why is he banging on his tray so hard? Why does he always pee out the top of his diaper (had to call a friend with boys on that one. Turns out you need to point it downward when attaching the new diaper). By this time we'd managed to get another house but realized it was going to be a tight fit with 4 kids (but were happy to be in a nice neighborhood).
Joey got a new job which was supposed to be a dream come true and turned out to be 4 years of living hell. It was painful to see my kind husband being treated poorly but it was a real testimony to his love for me and the kids that he stayed there in order to take care of us. When he finally took a pay cut and less stability to get out of there we were elated. Some things are more important than money. In fact, many many things are.
In 2003 we'd had a brand new house built which is more than double the size of our last one and it's a good thing because we weren't done filling it. See how our "temporary" move to Arizona turned out?
We'd found out how great surprises can be with our first boy and decided to stop messing around with our own plans. Nearly 6 years (and another 4 miscarriages) after Asher we were blessed with another boy. I was 41 and a little more tired but, by this time, I had a lot of helpers around me. This boy was much gruntier and banged much harder on his tray than the first one. Fun! Levi (aka Skate, thanks to Asher naming him) has kept every last one of us on our toes and the other kids moved past the "isn't he cute?" to "why does he keep breaking my stuff?!" phase pretty quickly.
So here we are. 25 years. It really does feel like 25 years except it feels like we just started having kids. How is it that part goes so fast? He still makes me laugh and every day tells me I'm pretty. He's cuter than ever (and has put on enough weight to look healthy) and is nuts about his kids. He takes us to church every week and is nice enough to run to the store for maxi pads when one of us gals needs them (yes, the ones with wings please). He's not the same man I married and I'm glad. I'm not the same either. We've both learned how to argue, adjust, confront, and grow, while still laughing. We've had loads of disappointments which could have devastated us but were fortunately off set by overwhelming blessing. And that's how life is. Jackpot.
