The Memory Conundrum

My mom was ten years older than I am now when she passed away of diabetes problems and related heart problems. Ten years does not seem like a long time to have left. And as I seem to more often forget what I cooked for dinner last night (which is a blessing because I'm sure it wasn't healthy), I also seem more able to remember some things from a long time ago. Our friend's son Patrick is starting a new job in Okemos, Michigan. Almost 41years ago, Ann and I moved into our first apartment on our own in Okemos, Michigan. We were married on Saturday night, December 30, 1972, in St. Marys, Ohio, spent our wedding night in Toledo (how many people can say that?), then moved on to Okemos to open the new apartment we had loaded up with lots of boxes and left-over furniture from both families  two weeks earlier. I was to start student teaching at Okemos High School three days after we got married. Unfortunately, when we arrived late at night in Okemos, our apartment door was open and there was nothing inside. Turns out, the heavy rains had gotten into the apartment and soaked all the boxes and bookcases and other furniture. Luckily our landlord had moved all our stuff to a new dry apartment. He happened to see us standing in front of the old apartment and came out and explained everything. We traded keys with him and went "home" to find everything piled in next to the door. We had never lived together - we had dorm rooms and apartments at our respective universities, and when we went home for break, we each lived with our own parents, who lived two miles apart.  So the first apartment was a big deal. This was not a good way to start. We were in a drier apartment, but much of our stuff was soaked and hadn't been laid out to dry. We had spent time two weeks earlier arranging our furniture the way we wanted it. The new apartment was shaped differently and would take a while to sort out. And it was 11 PM on the 31st. We had one day (New Year's Day) before I needed to report to Okemos High School on January 2nd. Much of the rest of that winter and early spring are not as vivid in my mind. I know Ann would sometimes get up early (she was waiting to get signed up to do sub jobs at local elementary schools) and cook pancakes and sausages on the electric griddle we got as a wedding gift. We had a 1962? yellow Volkswagen Beetle that we loved. And not much money to live on. And we survived. The next year we moved to the Chicago suburbs looking for teaching jobs and our seven months in Okemos was over. But we remember it fondly for the most part. We were together, happy, and broke - the newlywed trifecta.

 I wouldn't be surprised to see more of these posts in the future. It is a simple way to pass our story on to our kids. Some of the story they have heard before, but some will be new. Other people will see these stories, too, but that's OK because these stories are often their stories as well. A lot of these stories involve our kids, the Lighthalls and/or the Robinsons, and their kids or our families and their kids. They are welcome to fill in any gaps they see or make corrections in the comments. We can talk about what happened. When my parents did this with their friends around the dinner table in the 50's we would call it "green shuttering". "You remember the Murphys; they bought the old Doc Place house two years ago, you know, the one with the green shutters. She was a Hertenstein, I think, Sam's daughter." And on it would go for two hours or more while we kids quietly snuck out of the kitchen to find something to do.

So, Patrick, enjoy your time in Okemos. Make a lot of memories, so that when 2054 rolls around, you can tell us all about it. Well, not us. We'll have our hearing aids turned off to make life simpler in the home the kids put us in. Just talk really loud. We can't hear that either, but you'll feel good, because, like, you really tried.