80!

If others don't get tired of hearing me talking about how quickly time goes, I get tired of saying it.  But, it's true.  My husband will be 80 on Wednesday! Our eldest son and his wife came down from Jacksonville yesterday, took us out to lunch and visited with us for several hours.  My daughter-in-law and I had been planning it for weeks.  It was to be a surprise and it was.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep a secret? Especially from him.  He's very astute.

There was arranging for the birthday cake and making a reservation for lunch at Mulligan's, a very popular restaurant on the river.  There were the phone conversations back and forth with my daughter-in-law without Dad knowing.  I couldn't even tell people here at the ranch for fear someone would spill the beans!

We pulled it off.  He was honored that his son would think of him and be willing to drive 3 hours just to spend time with him.  Our daughter-in-law outdid herself with his gift as well.  She'd been begging me to give her ideas for his gift, but I'm as clueless as anyone else on what wouldmake him happy.  She bought him a basket full of junk food!  Cheetos, jumbo cashews, chocolate covered cashews, candy coated cashews, pumpkin flavored candied popcorn, candy corn mixed with raisins and peanuts, and a whole lot more! Guess what we had for supper last night.

My husband of nearly 52 years does not look 80, does not act 80, and doesn't seems to feel 80.  I hope it's not because our vision of 80 is what 80 looked like when we were still impressionable youth.  As a teenager, I thought 25 was old!  I hope we're not fooling ourselves.  A friend remarked that he's still active and that makes a huge difference.

Sheila, our dog, gets a lot of credit for that.  He walks her, plays with her, feeds her, has been to training with her. Then, too, he feeds the cows and polices the grounds which gets him outside and busy doing things that give him a sense of accomplishment.

He amazes himself that he's lived this long.  Born with rickets, his legs had to be broken several times in order to straighten them.  If they hadn't done that, his legs would have continued to bow outward,  making it impossible for him to walk.  At the time, the family lived in Oklahoma.  The university hospital that did the surgeries was hours away from home.  The family was poor.  His aunt and mother would take him to the hospital, drop him off and come back to pick him up 6 weeks later.  He was so young he didn't remember his own mother.  His aunt said he'd call her "The Woman."  His courage as an 18 month old earned him the honor of being the orthopaedic department's poster child.

The fact that he could only dog paddle did not deter him from jumping off railroad trestles into the Neosho River a few year later as a young boy.  Nor did it excuse him from picking cotton as a four year old when the family was forced to become migrant farmers.  Yes, he had a rough growing up, but it turned him into a fine man, the man who asked me to marry him almost 52 years ago.

He became an airplane mechanic and thought he should also be able to pilot those planes he fixed, so he did. In Hawaii, he couldn't wait to become a scuba diver.  At the time, he was a smoker and his first attempt to pass the swim test nearly killed him.  When reminded of it, he'd grumble that was only because he was trying to keep up with his competitive swimmer son who swam rings around him.  He finally managed and it was there in the beautiful waters of Hawaii he first began to truly understand there is a Creator God.  No human could possibly create what he saw, nor could it "just happen."  It was just too magnificent.  He also finally saw the damage cigarettes were doing to his lungs and gave it up.  "Don't buy any more cigarettes for me until I say so," he told me one day in January of 1979.

That's one of the things I so admire about him.  If he says he'll do it, he will.  Oh, that I could do that with food!  Another thing I admire about him is his compassion for children and hurting people.  When the 8 month old daughter of friends died, he was crushed.  He'd prayed for that child from the time we learned of the pregnancy until she died.  At the funeral home, he couldn't approach the casket.  He sat in the corner and cried.

He was escort for a P.O.W. returning from Viet Nam in 1973.  Finances were tight and I'd just gotten a job at Sears and our oldest son had just broken his leg in the bone growth area, meaning he had to stay off it for the entire time the cast was on.  An escort was almost a slave.  He was required to be there when the man got out of bed in the morning, when he went to bed at night, and all times in between. Very wisely, my husband simply incorporated him into our family.  He'd never been to a movie.  I got a woman I worked with to be a blind date for him and we double dated at the movies.  He brought him home for supper.  He'd never done any kind of work around the house.  Bob taught him how to use a lawn mower.  We took him bowling. Anything to bring him up to speed after the 4 1/2 years he'd spent in the Hanoi Hilton.  Without sacrificing his family.

After 52 years, he can still make me laugh.  It may well be the glue that's held our marriage together.  I have a sober, serious nature and it takes effort to make me laugh, but he does it.  My favorite pictures of him are him playing with his children and grand children.  I have such fond memories of our granddaughter sitting on his lap, watching television.  Her eyes would be filled with sleep, her hair tangled and her nightie rumpled, but she'd snuggle up in the recliner with her grandpa and watch cartoons or "The Andy Griffith Show."  What grown man wants to watch cartoons or reruns of "The Andy Griffith Show"?

In spite of the rough start, he's had a good life.  Perhaps even because of it.  He learned to roll with the punches.  He learned to take risks and didn't blame others if they didn't work out.  What a man!  Happy Birthday, man of my dreams!