Happy Anniversary…

Mom and Dad would have been married 73 years ago today…July 3rd 1948….had to be quite the day….I have only imagined it.

Before I get into the imagination part, I just had the memory of telling a former sponsor’s wife that my parents’ names were George and Lorraine, and she cracked up laughing, to which I was bewildered. She was a pretty young lady, and could have been my daughter, but she and her husband were up and coming AMWAY Distributor stars. (For the record, they are no longer involved and neither am I)…… Then she called me “Marty,” and then I got it…”Back to the Future,” a great film, but Marty’s parents were called George and Lorraine, and of course, if you have seen the film, you know the ending of their lives.

George and Lorraine Nyman (my parents)…well…it was like I never thought it would be. She was a die-hard Catholic from a rough French-Canadian background, who quit school after the 5th grade to help her family with the finances from the depression, and who gave up her dream of being a roller skating queen in the roller derby, because her mother vehemently oppposed it, and he was a mediocre Protestant, who quit high school to earn his fortune like Harry James (a very famous trumpet player years ago), and his parents really didn’t care much. Eva, his mother, let him do anything he wanted, because, after all…she almost lost him to Scarlet Fever as a child and Dad’s mother was more the manager of the household than her husband and nagged until the decisions were made in her favor.

So the stage was set, and because their marriage was dubious from the beginning, there wasn’t alot of hope from the extended families on both sides….that is my imagination, anyway….I could be wrong….and probably am…but it is interesting to speculate. It was suggested that the two opposing religious faiths would collide into failure, but Dad consented to allow his wife the liberty to do whatever she wanted to raise her kids “in the faith.” He had other fish to fry. He was learning how to play the piano professionally, as his asthma cut down his hopes of being another Harry James. And it wasn’t until about 4 days before his death that he “saw the light” and confessed his sins as he laid on the last bed of his life, hopeful of meeting those of his own family in the great heaven above.

Happy Anniversary Mom….happy anniversary Dad….we miss you, and if I had to choose you all over again….I am probably out of my mind to suggest it….but I’d choose you again, with the hope that I would do better the next time. You left me with 5 younger sisters to care for and be cared for, so all is not lost, I don’t think. Oh well….life goes on, as they say….”C’est la vie”