I think after last week’s screed, I’ll write something inoffensive about home and hearth this time around. Disaffected patriots are a dime a dozen on both sides of the aisle, anyway.
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On a shelf in my parents’ basement sits a small box, labeled in my dad’s hand with words to this effect:
“Rod & Lynn Love Letters (Yech)”
When I was a small boy who loved poking around in the basement, I was young and daft enough to read a few of the letters my parents exchanged before their marriage. I don’t remember what they said any more, and wasn’t really old enough to understand them anyway.
(OK, one letter I can’t help but remember. It was the mid-1960s, and my mom was going to college in Boston. My dad had the cheek to address a letter to her at “Boston University, Somewhere Near Where The Strangler Is, Boston, Mass.” I would later inherit his blue eyes and his black sense of humor.)
The time period of my grandfather’s calendars — 1961 to 1975 — trace my dad’s evolution from high school senior to married father of two.
And in so doing, it provides the occasional awww-isn’t-that-sweet glimpse of my parents when they were young and in love … just like the letters inside the yech-box.
The glimpses look kinda like this:

January 21, 1967. (Coincidentally, Albert DeSalvo – who claimed to be the Boston Strangler – was convicted of other, unrelated crimes earlier that week.)
I didn’t ask my folks whether they remember anything about their trip to New York for an engagement ring (however exotic it might have been — were there no acceptable rings in Stamford?)
I guess I’d rather imagine what those days were like.
I can’t imagine them too specifically, of course, since I wasn’t actually there. My mental images of my young-and-in-love folks are kinda like cardboard figures, fleshed out somewhat by my knowledge of their personalities and my views of photo albums from those early days.
I know they were both musical, and that probably provided considerable common ground in their earliest days.
I know that they carried on much of their courtship more or less long-distance, without benefit of Skype or email, and made it last anyway.
I know they moved together, right after their marriage, to a place neither of them had much of any familiarity with, and found it a place to sink roots.
And I know that, despite their disparate personalities, they had some unquantifiable degree of interpersonal chemistry.
Forty-six years after that calendar entry, the same ring is still on my mom’s finger. My parents have gone from being young soon-to-be-marrieds, to being the last couple standing when the wedding DJ starts clearing the dance floor a decade at a time.
It hasn’t always been easy (it never is), but some essential part of the compact they forged back in the mid-1960s is still alive. Something lives in the yech-box that has not been chased away by kids and job pressures and gray hairs and all the other pressures of adult life.
How ’bout that.
Love that your parents are still together (mine too) and love your dad’s sense of humor!
Yes … there are a couple great family stories of him saying/writing something inappropriate, out of either playfulness or frustration. I have the same impulse but (usually) restrain it.
Chills all over. Another beautiful tribute. How proud your folks must be that you’ve chosen to do this when you sit down to a computer.
I’ve not heard from them yet; we’ll see what they think. Perhaps my dad will say “yech.”
Great stories……..great to hear they are still mixing that vibe! And once again you tell it so well.
Thank you very much.
May I re-blog for Valentine’s Day in a few weeks, please?
I would prefer you not reblog it, but you’re welcome to post a link to it. Thanks.
This brought tears to my eyes! I am extremely honored to be the subject of one of your blogs.
Lynn of the ‘yech’ letters
Thank you. Reality is a little less than the sweet fairy tale you weave, but yes, we still enjoy each other.
I disagree only with your penultimate sentence. I don’t think the secret of our marital longevity is anywhere to be found in the Yech box. I haven’t the stomach to open said box, but I suspect the pre-marriage romantic attraction likely elucidated in the love letters has been replaced by something more mundane and solid and perpetual as we slog through life with a smile… together. I don’t know how to define this “something”, although humor is, and I think must be, a part of it.
Your mother may disagree, and probably will – and I think that’s part of the secret of our success!
And rings were cheaper in New York (your mother’s parents “knew someone in the business”). Speaking of mundane…
Thanks! Please write our obits when the time comes.
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This is sweet to read from the offspring’s point of view! Speaking of humor, I wonder what was so funny about that coffee pot in the pic? Also I would say, I think you inherited your mother’s violet eyes.That is from someone who notices eyes. (My grand daughter just noted that my eyes look like their dog’s). You may well have inherited your Dad’s black sense of humor but you seem to be managing well with it. If your father addressed that letter to your mother like that these days, he probably would be arrested!
And ONE MORE THING: One important lesson your grandparents taught by example is to stay with your marriage through thick & thin (or in their case, thin & thin). Let’s hope we can maintain that lesson through our senior years!
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