Love Stories

WARNING: This is going to get pretty sappy. But, Love Stories can be like that. I’m not really an expert on love or stories, but I thoroughly enjoy both. Speaking as a layperson, so to speak, I’m guessing that the Love Story is the oldest and most enduring of any storyline. Let’s hope it stays that way, or as The Beatles sang: sometimes, “All you need is love.”

LOVE STORY No. 1.

Ours began in June 1972. Well that’s not really true. It started before that. That’s just when we formalized it all with public vows, rings, flowers, cake, punch, etc.

Back in the day when our romance was emerging, there was a little slice of pop culture that in some ways became a part of the 70s courting lifestyle. It was a cartoon series called “Love Is…”. Here’s an example:

Love Is… is the name of a comic strip created by New Zealand cartoonist Kim Casali in the 1960s. The cartoons were published in booklets in the late 1960s before appearing in strip form in a newspaper in 1970, under the pen name “Kim”. They were syndicated soon after and the strip is syndicated worldwide today by Tribune Media Services. One of her most famous drawings, “Love Is…being able to say you are sorry”, published on February 9, 1972, was marketed internationally for many years in print, on cards and on souvenirs. The beginning of the strip coincided closely with the 1970 film Love Story. The film’s signature line is “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” --Wikipedia

By the way, as it turns out, the movie was wrong; the cartoon was right. Love does from time to time include being sorry. (I’ve learned something in 44 years.)

Even though we will be celebrating 44 years of the marriage part of our Love Story in a few weeks, we’re really just getting started, relatively speaking.

LOVE STORY No. 2.

Tomorrow we will celebrate Anniversary Number 70 with my Mom and Dad. That’s a lot of togetherness. Not only can they finish one another’s sentences, they can actually start one another’s sentences. I am grateful for the wonderful way they prove the beauty of marriage, still.

Their story began in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. Mom grew up there. Dad was in town as a part of an assignment as a young soldier during WW II. They both happened to be at the local skating rink one night. He asked her to skate, and as my Dad likes to quip, “We’ve been going around together ever since.”

What do you buy the happy couple for their 70th according to those anniversary charts? Google, google, google. The lists seem to skip from 65 to 75, like 70’s not significant. As I was searching the lists though, I peeked at the anniversary category for #44, hoping it isn’t “Hearing Aids”. 

“Groceries”. “Groceries”??? What the what? So, I guess on June 16, you’ll find us at Whole Foods. We’ll splurge; it’s our anniversary.

Even though we’ve been married almost 44 years, we’re partying like it’s #10. The 10th year is the “Aluminum” anniversary. And since we now adventure in our tiny, aluminum love shack on wheels, it’s like we’re young and broke again.

LOVE STORY No. 3.
Our oldest son and his beautiful wife Kara, just celebrated anniversary #11. Corey posted this on the Facebook:

He must have thought this was the “Groceries” anniversary. How do I know that 11 years later their story is a Love Story? You can see it in the kids.

They have three happy, confident, tender-hearted, wonder-full little girls. That kind of stuff sprouts and grows in the fertile soil of loving relationships.

LOVE STORY No. 4.

In a few weeks, we’ll celebrate the formal start of another amazing Love Story. This is one that I never would have seen coming. It’s one of those that if you had any doubt about Providence, you wouldn’t now. Our youngest son, Kyle is engaged to Brooke. If you know these two, you have a glimpse of how special this is. If I lived in one of those country’s where the male of the family still got to pretend like he’s the All-Knowing Patriarch, in a country where the marriages are all arranged, this is the way I would have arranged it.

Turns out they didn’t need my arranging anything. It’s like they have discovered something that was there all along. Maybe that’s what Love Stories are really all about.

And they all lived happily ever after.

For [Pentecost] Sunday, May 15, 2016

“And in the last days,” God says, “I will pour out my spirit upon every sort of flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy and your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams.” Acts 2:17

As an old man, my dream this Pentecost Sunday is for honest, humble, fearless, fearful, awe-full voices to speak clearly.

The Descent Of The Spirit by Gustave Dore

School's Out

ONE OF THE THINGS I MISS MOST about being a schoolboy is getting out of school for the summer.

dragging main somewhere

To quote Mr. Alice Cooper (“Is he still alive?” you might be asking. Yes, yes he is. In fact you can catch him in concert August 19 in Oklahoma City.):

No more pencils
No more books
No more teacher’s dirty looks

Out for summer
Out till fall
We might not go back at all

School’s out forever
School’s out for summer
School’s out with fever
School’s out completely

The summer of 1969 was a long time ago, but still I remember the end of my senior year. I remember prom, baccalaureate, graduation and the summer. I remember feeling like the king of the world in a Donald Trump sort of arrogant way. I remember getting out of high school as having a certain finality to it, even though I would be starting college classes in the fall.

I’m a firm believer in the idea of the rhythms of life. Maybe it comes from marching miles and miles of parade routes playing in a drumline. The drumline plays what is called a cadence. It serves as the clock that keeps the band marching with order and as a unit. Without a cadence there would be chaos.

So it’s been a few decades now since I last walked out of a classroom for the summer. But still I seem to hear a distant drum signaling a change in the air. Just to restore the rhythm, maybe I’ll take a vacation day next Monday and sleep in. I won’t worry about homework or grades. I won’t diagram any sentences or dissect any frogs. I certainly won’t be wearing shoes or tucking in my shirttail. And I’ll chew gum anywhere and any time I want to.

In a few days, me and my Amazing-Missus will be going to a Beach Boys concert. Maybe they’ll do their happy little school’s out song, Dance Dance Dance:

After six hours of school I’ve had enough for the day
I hit the radio dial and turn it up all the way

I gotta dance (dance dance dance now the beat’s really hot) right on the spot
(Dance dance dance right there on the spot)
The beat’s really hot

When I feel put down I try to shake it off quick
With my chick by my side the radio does the trick

I gotta dance (dance dance dance now the beat’s really hot)

No question, if there is a soundtrack for summer fun it would be written by the Beach Boys. Maybe after the concert we’ll go out for a milkshake, maybe we’ll drag a Main street somewhere, maybe we’ll even go parking, and maybe we’ll stay out past midnight—probably not, but we could if we wanted to; because school’s out for summer.

Dancing With Danger

THERE WAS A TIME when traveling evangelists would preach their “End Times” sermon at every revival meeting. Usually it was on Friday night, after serving up free hot dogs to all the kids they could round up. It was a surefire way to ensure strong stats for the evangelist’s marketing efforts; not that some of them actually needed real numbers to prove their pulpit power.

The problem became that we had all heard the End Times talk so many times that we had become desensitized to the alarm of it all.

“In psychology, desensitization is defined as the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it. It also occurs when an emotional response is repeatedly evoked in situations in which the action tendency that is associated with the emotion proves irrelevant or unnecessary.” —Wikipedia

I’m typing this on a Friday afternoon, the sky is dark and there is an eerie calmness outside. Forecasters are once again painting maps in hot colors spelling weather doom. Storm chasers are in position, dopplers are doppling, and we Okies are once again awaiting what could be the Big One, just as we did a few days ago. I hate to say I’ve become desensitized, but I’ve become desensitized.

We Okies joke about our homeland’s fickle weather and shifting tectonic plates. We tend to have fun poking fun at our weather-persons and their giddy anticipation over building storms.

Please, don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that we have the technology we have and those who are enthusiastically dedidcated to keeping us “4-warned” “ahead of the storm” etc. Goodness knows we’ve seen enough storm destruction, mayhem, and worse to make us cherish all efforts to keep us “weather-aware” and safe.

It’s a love/hate thing—with the weather and the meteorologists. Now that we are seeking adventure in a tiny, shiny, aluminum house on wheels, hail and lightening are our archenemies. So while I love the spring rains, as long as there is a “chance” of severe weather, our little Bambi has to stay in her shelter. And as one of our local weather-prophets said on his TV weathercast just last night, “In Oklahoma, in May, there is always a chance…”

It’s been a few days now since I started composing this post. The storms blew through, the sun came up the next morning and the sky seemed more clear. The grass and trees seemed more green, and Oklahoma is still on the map. Now another weekend is approaching and with it the warning of impending severe weather, and we have weekend travel plans.

I feel like a fourteen year-old boy again. Do I go to the dance even though the evangelist warned that the “King Is Coming” any moment now, and he is bringing wrath for fourteen year-old boys dancing too close with fourteen year-old girls?

I can envision pulling our little hail-pelted Airstream home and the roads being lined with all the weathermen, weatherwomen, and old itinerate preachers saying, “We tried to warn you! Verily, verily, we tried to warn you.”