Fifty Years!

It’s turned into an epic tale lasting more than half a century, so I guess I have to start at the beginning.  As Mal said, “You can’t open the book of my life and jump in the middle.”

It was spring in 1972 and I was working the graveyard shift at the Plaza Hotel in Houston.  Working at night was great for a college student:  if you finished your work early, there was ample time to study.  And it taught you that sleep was a luxury reserved for weekends.

One night, the night auditor’s girlfriend brought him a pizza and the two of them shared it while I was wasting time with paperwork.  I was more than a little pissed that neither of them offered me a slice of pizza.  That was the first time I saw The Doc.

A month or two later, the lease was up on my prison-cell-sized apartment and I agreed to share an even smaller apartment with the night auditor.  It was a garage apartment, built over a three-car garage, in a run-down section of Houston, far too close to the ship channel—a real dump but the price was right.  Since I saw my roommate’s girlfriend frequently, I eventually forgave her for not sharing that pizza and I even dated her sister a couple of times.  (We saw The Godfather and after the movie, she wouldn’t get into my car until I checked the backseat.)

When summer came, both my roommate and I had some time off, and The Doc suggested that we go to Florida…No particular reason why, since we lived 40 miles from the beach in Galveston, but what the hell?  We jumped in my car and drove to Daytona, Florida.  After enjoying the beach for a few days, we turned around and drove straight back.  Somewhere around Alabama, I realized that I had stopped thinking about The Doc as my roommate’s girlfriend.  Driving all night while the other two slept gave me ample time to think over the situation.

It was very simple.  I had fallen in love with the smartest woman I had ever met.  Now all I had to do was convince her to go out with me.

When we got back to Houston, I announced that I intended to marry The Doc.  Privately, I told her that we were going to get married and have a son named What’s-His-Name.  No one believed me about any of this—there was some discussion of my sanity.

Naturally, my roommate was a little pissed.  There was an apartment for rent across the street, so I moved out.  It took several weeks to convince The Doc to go out on a date with me.  She, too, lived in a truly rotten part of town (on our first date, I killed a rat on her front porch with my pocketknife).  I don’t suppose that is part of modern dating practices.

The first date was followed by more—thankfully rodent-free—and eventually The Doc agreed to marry me.  I think the deciding factor was that Alice, her cat, obviously loved me more than her.  If you can’t depend on a cat’s judgement, then this world is doomed.

The wedding was a monument to how to get married on the cheap.  There were handwritten invitations mailed out to the twenty-odd guests.  The ceremony was in my parents’ living room.  The bride wore a beautiful blue dress purchased from Foley’s for $14 and her bouquet was Bank’s roses and English Ivy from the front yard.  I splurged—at my brother’s insistence—and spent $30 on a brown sport coat.  

Though The Doc disputes the veracity of this part of the story, it was almost an incredibly short marriage.  The ceremony was performed in my parents’ living room, directly in front of the fireplace.  When the preacher (the same one who had married my parents twenty-seven years earlier) pronounced “You may kiss the bride….” The Doc’s eyes rolled up in her head and she started to fall backward towards the open fireplace.  I caught her—and we’ve been catching each other for decades now.

It was a nice reception (also in my parents’ living room).  The wedding cake was from the local H.E.B grocery store.  I remember my mother being a little wistful after the ceremony and she confided to my new spouse that she thought that I would never finish college.  She was right: starting this Spring, I’m a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in Art History, which will be my seventh degree (I think).  I’ve decided to homestead the university.

We honeymooned at the Menger Hotel in downtown San Antonio—a distance of almost 15 whole miles from where we were married.  With our extravagant entertainment budget, we watched the Wizard of Oz on television and went to the zoo the next day.  If I remember right, we walked by the Alamo a couple of times.  We are, after all, native-born Texans.

Shortly after the honeymoon was over, The Doc was accepted into medical school.  I was shocked because I had known lots of people who claimed they were going to medical school, The Doc was the first person I knew who actually did it.  

Medical School was expensive and we had to cut more than a few corners to financially survive the next four years.  We still lived in slums, there were no vacations, and we lived about as frugally as possible.  The local grocery store kept a loaded cart in the back of the store, where badly dented cans or cans that had lost their labels were offered for sale for a dime each.  Until I started earning a better wage, most of our meals came out of that cart, periodically supplemented with something I shot.

We waited years, until The Doc was a senior surgical resident, to start a family, and yes…we named our first son What’s-His-Name.  A couple of years later, The-Other-One was born.  Though it has been decades since either has lived at home, I occasionally still wake up in the middle of the night thinking I should go check to see if they are sleeping okay.  How fast those years went by and how much I would pay to experience just one more day of their childhood.

As I’m writing this, it has been 50 years and a couple of hours since that wedding ceremony.  And two children, and a half-dozen grand kids, several moves, and two careers.  I’ve lost a kidney and had a heart attack—neither of which I would have survived if my wife hadn’t been there with me.  I fell in love with The Doc because she was the smartest woman I ever met.  She still is and I still am.  I still wonder why she ever said yes to my absurd proposal!

And marrying her is the smartest thing I’ve ever done.  

P.S.  She says that she married the smartest man she’s ever met, but she's just being kind.  I might believe stubborn.