Tuesday, February 24, 2009

red-letter day...

A wedding anniversary is the celebration of love,
trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity.
The order varies for any given year. { Paul Sweeney }


Don't they look incredible? I'm sure I'm biased, but every time I look at this picture I marvel at how classy and elegant my grandparents were. This picture was taken on their wedding day, sixty-five years ago today, in 1944. The photographer struggled to color the image so that my grandmother's naturally platinum white hair showed up in the print, and then layered over the lace in the dress so that it didn't look like a face just floating above the white of her dress. Whenever one of us would remark about how beautiful she looked in it, she would often remark that it didn't even feel like her because she had never had dark hair in her life.

"Love", to Our Sister, Adair and Paul. Seeing her beautiful script on the photograph makes me miss her. And how she used to put words in quotations whenever she would inscribe books or cards. Several years ago, in my birthday card, instead of writing much love, she wrote "much much" before signing her name. "Much much", Grandmother.

My grandparents met in the midst of wartime. Granddad was moonlighting with a band and during a break, he looked over to the rhythm guitarist from his drum set and pointed out this woman across the nightclub. She had this stunning silver hair and a young face. To the guitarist's doubt, Granddad declared that he was going to marry that girl. He waited all night to meet her and when he finally did, boldly asked if he could take her out the following night.

Grandmother thought him quite presumptuous. Determined to teach him a lesson, she accepted his invitation and told him at what time to call for her at her home.

When he arrived the next evening, there she was decked to the nines... with twelve of her very best girlfriends that she had invited to go along. { Just thinking about it makes me grin. } Well, Granddad took it in stride and paid for each one, showing them all a night out on the town as he had boasted he would the night before.

Granddad used to say that the best wedding present he received was running into the guitarist almost a year after they'd been married and having the pleasure of introducing Grandmother as his wife. The slack-jawed look on the man's face must've been priceless.

1 comment:

Suzy said...

That is such a touching story! beautiful memories, indeed! "Much, much" Suzy