Golden Wedding Anniversary

Golden Wedding Anniversary

My parents had been married for nearly fifty years. I had done nothing for their 25th wedding anniversary, nor their 30th, or their 40th. It was insensitive of me. I am a very bad daughter. And my mother was not going to let me get away with it again. She called me a few weeks before her Golden Wedding Anniversary and told me that needed to talk. I went to see her and took her to lunch at Luby’s to see what was up.

There was a woman with a baby sitting at the table next to us. The baby began to cry and I said, “Golly I wish we had sat somewhere else!”

Mother looked at me with a very stern look in her eyes and said, “Let me tell you something! Children are lucky their parents don’t kill them!”

I was shocked. My eyes opened wide with surprise. “Oh my!” I said. “Was I that bad as a child, Mom?”

Suddenly changing her mood, she very sweetly said, “No, YOU were a perfect angel!” Then she looked at me sternly again. “Because I put the fear of God in you!”

“That’s my mother!” I thought to myself, amused by her cantankerous nature, as always.

Mama went on to inform me that she and my Daddy had been married for nearly fifty years. And she was expecting me to give her a really nice great big Golden Wedding Anniversary party… or else. And so it was. I have never been one to defy my mother. After all, she had convinced me at a very early age that she would kill me if I did.

It was a really good thing that Mama told me she wanted to have a party, because celebrating fifty years of miserable marriage never would have occurred to me. She had always acted like she hated my father intensely and made it very clear that the only reason she stayed married to him for all those years was because of me. I felt terribly guilty bearing the burden of her discontent while growing up. But I didn’t want my parents to get a divorce, either. Why she wanted to celebrate was beyond my comprehension.

I am not the only one who noticed that Mama seemed to hate being married to Daddy. My little niece Kitty Cat could see it when she was six years old. She put her precious little hand on her tiny little hip and said, “Grandma, I don’t know why you don’t divorce that man! It’s obvious you can’t stand him.” Mama softened her tone toward Daddy a lot after Kitty Cat told her that. She even began to show some affection for him in later years, and it finally became apparent that she cared about him.

I have to admit that it was partly Daddy’s fault that Mama couldn’t stand him. Because he intentionally goaded her. And he probably couldn’t resist doing that either, because they were stuck in a negative emotional vortex. Neither one of them could get out of it. Mama used to cry and beg him to say that he loved her. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He simply wasn’t in the mood. Besides, he thought it ought to be obvious, since he didn’t leave her. She, on the other hand, needed to hear him say it.

When Mama wasn’t complaining because Daddy wasn’t being affectionate enough to suit her, she was upset because he expected her to turn her feelings on and off like a faucet and show him some affection. Without some verbal reassurance the he loved her, she couldn’t do that.

They were gridlocked in a Southern Baptist battle of competing discontent. It was an emotional standoff. Between the two of them there was always something to be mad about. They had a bipolar relationship. Mama fought with Daddy daily and he ignored her. That made her even madder. I am not sure who enjoyed aggravating who the most. Yet despite all the animosity in our family, we usually ended up watching TV together, scratching each other’s backs, and having a tickle party right before bedtime. One time Daddy tickled me until I cried. I didn’t like that. It felt dangerous to me. I was afraid I might suffocate and die. So we didn’t do that any more.

Having been informed in no uncertain terms, that Mama was expecting me to have a huge Golden Wedding Anniversary party for her, I began to plan for it immediately. Little did I know that skeletons would be falling out of the closet along with a seven foot tall walking talking robot from outer space. Because that is what Daddy wanted. For Mama, I ordered dozens and dozens of big yellow roses because yellow was always her favorite color.

My father was the youngest of eleven siblings and Mama had a lot of friends. When the baby at the table next to us finally stopped crying, my mother reached into her purse and pulled out a list of two hundred people she wanted me to invite. My heart filled with dread. I accepted the list graciously, none the less. Then I went home and made a list of everything that needed to be done before sending out the invitations. I also called Mama’s cousin Etsy to see if there was anything she could do to help. I was hoping Etsy might volunteer to do something on the list. But instead she began telling me what all I needed to do, and how to do it, as if I didn’t know.

I politely explained that I knew what needed to be done, and I knew how to do it all, but I just didn’t have time to do everything myself. And I was hoping to delegate some of the tasks on my list. It quickly became perfectly clear that Etsy wasn’t interested in that kind of helping. It was not surprising because Etsy is a chief, not an Indian. Besides, she has her own life, children, and grandchildren to take care of, so I couldn’t really blame her for not having time to help.

Etsy is an Eastern Star. Her great great grandfather died at the Alamo. His name is engraved on the wall. When Etsy speaks, people listen. She’s a tiny little woman with a whole lot of power. She also has an odd way of dropping little hints when she has a secret that she wants to tell you. But she won’t say what it is unless you beg and plead and reason with her for a long time first, and promise to high heavens that you won’t ever tell anybody. It was obvious that Etsy had something she wanted to tell me. What she had to say after I begged and pleaded with her was very interesting, indeed.

It seemed that Etsy had always been very troubled by the way Mama treated me as a child. Etsy said he felt sorry for me. By today’s standards, it would have been considered child abuse. But back then a lot of people took a spare the rod spoil the child approach to child rearing. And my mama was one of them. She wasn’t about to let me get away with anything. Of course, I already knew that my mother was mean to me. But I was used to it, and didn’t really mind very much, except while it was happening. That’s just the way my mother was. I loved her anyway. She was just trying to be a good mother, the best way she knew how.

Etsy reminisced about the time I got my butt “blistered” when I was a toddler for taking my own diaper off and playing with my own poop while Mama was taking a nap because she had a migraine headache. When my mother woke up and saw me sitting there covered in my own shit from head to toe, Etsy was afraid she was going to kill me. Fortunately I survived the moment, and don’t even remember it. But that paled in comparison to Etsy’s next revelation, which was much harder for her to give up. Tired of wondering while she eluded to the possibility that there were other things I needed to know that were more important, I ventured to make a guess at what Etsy was hinting at.

“Etsy, are you referring to the time my mother had an affair?” I asked.

“How do you know about that affair?” She asked, wide eyed.

“Mama told me about it the day I got married.” I explained. “She insisted on having one of those excruciating mother daughter talks with me.”

“I can’t believe she told you about that!” Esty said.

“She told me she wanted to make sure that I never made the same kind of mistakes she made, because so many people got hurt.” I explained. “I’ve always wanted to know the details, but she wouldn’t say. I’ve been wondering about that ever since. Etsy, do you know what happened?” I asked.

Relieved to know that she wasn’t revealing a secret, Etsy quickly began to fill me in on the details.

“Your mother was going to leave your Daddy!” She said. “But your Grandaddy threatened to ex-communicate her from the church and the family if she did. He had the power to do so too, because he was a deacon at the church. You know what a staunch Baptist he always was. He did not want his daughter getting a divorce.”

“Etsy, it sounds like you’re saying that my mother wanted to leave Daddy, and Grandaddy wouldn’t let her!” I said.

“Yep!” Etsy said. “You’re Grandaddy told your mother that he would stand by your Daddy and help him raise you, and she wouldn’t ever be able to see you or her mother any more. And she wouldn’t be able to come to church any more, either!”

“So Mother stayed with my daddy because she couldn’t bear the thought of losing me and her family and the church?” I asked.

“Yep! She really loved Hank, too. He was the love of her life!”

“My poor mother had to choose between the love of her life and her family?” I said.

“Yep! And that’s not all. Hank got depressed when your mother told him she couldn’t see him any more, and he never snapped out of it. A couple of years later he jumped off Mansfield Dam and killed himself!”

“No!”

“Yep! Your mother got really upset when she found out Hank committed suicide. Your daddy thought she was over him. And when he found out she wasn’t, they nearly got a divorce again!” Etsy said.

“Oh my! Now I understood why Mama always acted like she was doing me such a big favor by putting up with my father while I was growing up! I always resented her for that, and wanted to go live with Granny and Grandaddy.”

When Etsy told me her version of what happened, I felt a tremendous amount of love and appreciation for the sacrifice my mother had made to keep our family together. I finally understood why she was so bitter and angry. I had been hoping things could get better between us because we had never gotten along. And now I thought I finally understood why.

“Etsy, thank you for telling me all this! It’s such a relief to finally understand my mother!”

“Don’t you dare say a word to her about any of this. She has gone through enough.” Etsy said.

“But Etsy, I really need to thank her!”

“Not a word! You promise me!” Etsy demanded.

“Okay!” I said.

I saw no reason for Mama to get upset about me asking Etsy what happened, since she already told me about the affair when I got married. My desire to make things better between us by thanking her for sacrificing and keeping our family together was so strong I couldn’t ignore it. I also wanted to find out more about the man she loved. And all Etsy could tell me was that he was a truck driver who committed suicide while pining for Mama. Of course this was a very delicate subject, so I would have to proceed cautiously. But I had to at least try to make things better between us. The next time I went to see her, I decided to bring up the subject very very carefully.

“Mom, I want you to know that I really appreciate how much you sacrificed to keep our family together all those years!” I said.

“What are you talking about?” She said.

“Etsy told me that you wanted a divorce, but you decided to stay married to Daddy and keep the family together!” I explained.

“What did Etsy say?” Mama asked with an acid tongue.

“She said you gave up someone that you really loved and stayed with Daddy.” I explained.

“That is NOT what happened!” Mama snapped. “Etsy doesn’t know what she is talking about.”

“Well…what happened, then?” I asked.

“I was planning to leave your Daddy for Hank and he wouldn’t leave his wife and kids. He wanted us both to stay married and keep seeing each other.” Mama said.

“So Grandaddy’s ultimatum was not the reason you stayed with Daddy?”

“No! Hank was twenty years older than me. He had three kids. He didn’t know how his family would survive without him, and he’d already been through a divorce. He didn’t want to go through another one!”

As she spoke I remembered Mama looking for a job when I was a child. I remembered her finding one and me staying with Memaw while she was at work. I imagine Mama got stuck with Daddy, because she could’t find a job that paid enough for her to leave. Somehow I managed to summon the courage to ask another question.

“Were you planning to take me with you when you left Daddy?” I asked.

“Nope!” She said. “I was going to leave you there and let him take care of you for a change! He never helped me out around the house. He had no idea how hard it was to take care of a child. I wanted him to find out just how much work that is!”

She then burst into tears and quickly began apologizing profusely.

“I’m so sorry! I am very sorry! I don’t want to hurt you!” She said. "Why do we have to talk about this. It was fifty years ago!"

I was getting dizzy with mixed emotions. At first I felt a wave of relief to learn Daddy would have been the one raising me, instead of Mama, because she was always so mean to me. But also I felt sad and disappointed to learn she wasn't going to take me with her. My curiosity about the suicide also arose. There was something about what Etsy told me that didn’t quite make sense in light of Mama's version. I waited for her to stop crying and asked:

"It's okay Mama. I know you didn't mean to hurt me! But there's something else I am curious about. It's about the suicide?” I told her.

“What suicide?” She said.

“Etsy said Hank got so depressed when you refused to leave Daddy for him that he jumped off Mansfield Dam and killed himself!” I explained.
“That is NOT what happened!” Mama said.
 “Well what did happen then?” I asked.

Mama paused for a long silent moment.

“He’s still alive!” She then said quickly, slightly cheering up. 
“Well...He must be at least 90 years old by now!” I said. “Are you sure he’s alive?”
“Yes, he's alive! I know he’s alive.” She adamantly declared.

“How do you know? Do you ever see him?” I asked.

“No! I don’t see him any more!” She said.

"Well then how do you know he'd alive?"

"I just know!" Mama said. 
 “Where does he live?” I asked.

“I don’t know where he lives!”

“Well how do you know he’s alive?”

“He's alive! I know he’s alive. Why did Etsy have to bring this up? How dare she? It was fifty years ago! It doesn’t matter any more! I refuse to discuss this any further.” 
Too dazed and confused to ask any more questions, I spent the rest of the conversation assuring my mother that I was the one who brought up the subject to Etsy, so she wouldn’t be mad at her. Because then Etsy would be mad at me too.

“Etsy wouldn’t have said anything to me at all, Mama, if I hadn’t assured her that it would be okay for us to talk about it.” I said. “And I really did think it would be okay for us to talk about it because you are the one who told me about your affair when I got married. Remember? I just wanted to know some of the details. So I asked Etsy. That was all.” I explained. Mama strictly forbade me from ever discussing the subject with anyone again. 

That night I drove home in shock and immediately called my best friend, Twink, who gasped when she heard the story. The words that immediately tumbled out of her mouth after she sucked in air made me shudder. “Your Daddy pushed that truck driver off of Mansfield Dam and killed him!” She said. Then Twink immediately apologized for saying it. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have said that! Your Daddy is not a murderer. I’ve met him. He’s a very nice man. Everybody who knows him knows that. I shouldn’t have even thought something like that, much less said it. I don’t know what came over me! I don't know what made me say it!” Twink exclaimed.

It was too late for apologies, however. I had already turned white and nearly fainted because a phantom memory that had been haunting me for years flashed into my mind when Twink made the declaration. 

I remembered being in the car with my father and his older brother Oscar. I was standing on the seat in between them. It was late at night. We were driving down Ranch Road 620 on our way back from Mansfield Dam. Ranch Road 620 was a two lane highway back then. The high points in the road were so high, and the low areas were so low, it felt like a roller coaster ride to drive on it. The scenery in the hill country was absolutely breathtakingly magnificent in those days. Uncle Oscar was driving very slowly and deliberately. My daddy was looking at the beauty of nature.

“This is the promised land!” Daddy said. We were completely and eerily silent for the rest of the drive. It was as if we were going to a funeral or something. There was a calm quiet peacefulness in the car that I will never forget. The memory of going to Mansfield Dam with my father and Uncle Oscar had haunted me for years. Every time I thought about Daddy saying “This is the promised land,” I always wondered why he and Uncle Oscar took me out to Mansfield Dam with them at night when I was a child. I even asked my daddy about it one time. He said he had no recollection of him and Oscar ever taking me to Mansfield Dam. Then he stonewalled me and I couldn't talk to him about anything else either. It made me think he was lying.

As Twink’s declaration settled into my consciousness, my mind began swirling with all kinds of imaginary thoughts. It was impossible for me to stop my mind from trying to make up the rest of the story. Mama refused to stop seeing Hank, I told myself. The affair continued. When Daddy found out, he was furious. He called Hank and told him to stay away from Mama. Hank refused. Daddy told Hank to meet him at Mansfield Dam so they could settle it once and for all. Hank told Daddy to bring his fishing pole, because they needed to have a long talk. Daddy called Uncle Oscar and told him that Hank had invited him to go fishing at Mansfield Dam. Daddy said he needed somebody to go along and watch after me because he was taking me with him so Hand could see who he was hurting. Then a long repressed memory surfaced.

“Look at her! Do you see how beautiful she is? This is my daughter. She is the one who is suffering from all of this. This is who you are hurting!” Daddy said.

Hank declared that he loved my mother and needed her just as much as my father did. He said some day Daddy would understand why things had to be the way they were. Daddy handed me to Uncle Oscar and began to fight Hank. I was screaming in terror, because I was afraid Hank was going to kill my daddy. But Daddy wasn’t the one who died. When the fight was over we got in the car and left. On the way home we stopped at a pay phone booth. Uncle Oscar called the police and told them he had gone fishing on Lake Travis and he saw a man jump off Mansfield Dam while he was on his way home. The police found Hank’s body at the bottom of the dam the next day.

Had Twink’s hunch caused the skeletons to come tumbling out of the recesses of my troubled mind? Where were these crazy thoughts coming from?

If my Daddy really did push Hank off Mansfield Dam, his children grew up without a father. There was no way to know what kind of hardship and poverty they might have gone through as a result. A bible verse about the sins of the fathers being re-visited upon the sons for seven generations popped into my mind. But there is no such thing as reincarnation, I reminded myself. None the less, I immediately said a prayer for Hank’s family and I could feel the energy shift. A mild sense of relief came over me. I experienced a very subtle lightness of being. It was as if air were flowing through the cells of my body. What really happened at Mansfield Dam, of course, I can only imagine. All I could really remember was Daddy saying, “This is the promised land!” I was standing on the car seat between Daddy and Uncle Otto while he drove us home. 

But the Golden Wedding Anniversary party is something I can remember very clearly. Mama wanted to have a great big party with lots of pretty invitations. Daddy decided to hire a seven foot robot to renew their wedding vows. Etsy was adamantly opposed to the Robot. She did not want Mama suffering that kind of indignity after all she had been through. Much to Etsy’s dismay, I managed to hire the robot without upsetting Mama.

At first Daddy wanted me to call Brother Helfinger, the preacher who married my parents before I was born. Daddy wanted me to get him to come and renew their wedding vows. Brother Helfinger said he would love to come. But he was very old and frail and he lived in Florida. Daddy and I got all excited at first. We went around telling everybody that Brother Helfinger was coming and there was going to be a second ceremony. I even put it on the invitations and sent them out.

But the more we discussed the details of how to get Brother Helfinger to Texas and up the stairs, the less it seemed like a good idea, especially given his state of health. Brother Helfinger was on oxygen and in a wheel chair. Daddy was going to have to build a wheel chair ramp and he didn’t want to do that. We were going to have to rent a special van to pick him up at the airport, which would have been expensive. And in the midst of us realizing all this, Mama pulled me aside, and secretly told me that she was hoping Brother Helfinger couldn’t come, because she didn’t want to renew her wedding vows to my Daddy.

One night Daddy and I were on the telephone discussing what to do if Brother Helfinger couldn’t come renew their marriage vows after all, and he had a great idea…

“I know this guy with a Robot suit!” He said. “Let’s hire him to do the wedding vows!”

I was stunned, amused, and horrified. I certainly didn’t think Mama would like the idea and I was scared to tell her about it. So I called Etsy and told her what Daddy wanted to do. Etsy was even more horrified than me when she heard my Daddy wanted to hire a robot to renew the wedding vows.

“NO!” Etsy said. “Do NOT let your daddy hire that robot to renew their marriage vows! Your mother has been through enough!”

I assured Etsy I didn’t think it was a good idea, either, and promised her I wouldn’t let Daddy hire the robot. But Daddy kept insisting. A few days later he called me wanting to know if I had called the robot guy yet. I told him I didn’t think it was such a good idea, and maybe we ought to just skip that part.

“Why don't you like the idea?” He asked.

“I'm afraid Mama won't like it!” I explained.

“She likes the idea!” He said.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“Honey!" He yelled at my mother. "Will you come in here and tell Gayle to hire the Robot?” I could hear Daddy yelling at my mother.

Mama picked up the phone and told me to go ahead and hire a robot.

My mother never once doubted Daddy’s love for her, even though she kept begging him to say so. She just needed to hear it from him. That was all. But Daddy was the strong silent type. He wasn’t comfortable expressing his emotions. Mama always assured me that she loved my daddy too. But she didn’t love him like a lover. She loved him like a friend and a brother and a son, not the way a woman needs to love her husband in order to have a happy marriage.

When Mama told me to hire the robot to renew their wedding vows, I immediately called the man with the robot suit and hired him. Then we all decided, without even saying a word, to let everybody continue believing Brother Helfinger was coming to do the ceremony. And not one of us ever mentioned to anybody that there had been a change of plans.

Etsy was the only one who even knew that Daddy was thinking about hiring a robot, and she strictly forbade it. After promising her I wouldn’t let it happen, I left it at that. There were, however, two people at the party, who knew that a robot was coming. They were both psychologist friends of mine, who agreed to come to the party in case it was a disaster and I needed emotional support. But everything went as smoothly as could be expected, given the circumstances. That’s what I love about my family. Regardless of how tragic a situation can be, love wins out every time, no matter what.

We had a great big Golden Wedding Anniversary party, with a huge cake, yellow roses, and a robot. The robot guy showed up an hour early while we were still decorating. He had a trunk the size of a casket in the back of his truck. We hid him and his robot suit in a back room of the reception hall, and told him to take his time getting dressed. We explained that he was to wait for his cue before coming out, because we were going to surprise everybody.

All of the guests began to arrive all gussied up in their Sunday best dressed for a wedding ceremony. They were having a merry good old time milling around trying to figure out where Brother Helfinger was. Once everybody was finally seated, I beckoned for the silver giant to appear. The man in the robot suit punched a button on his costume and a whole bunch of loud siren-like music started playing. Then the tin man came waddling out of his den.

Mama and Daddy were standing there as straight poker faced as the day they got married for the first time. They waited somberly while Roboto slowly made his cumbersome way down the isle to the designated wedding ceremony area. To say that the guests were dumbfounded is an understatement. Etsy came running over to me demanding to know why I had dared defy her and hire that robot.

“I told you NOT to let your Daddy do this!” She exclaimed, wagging her finger from side to side in front of my face.

“It’s what they wanted, Etsy! Mama doesn’t mind! Look! She told me to hire him. She's smiling. She’s having a good time.

Etsy couldn’t deny that Mama seemed to be enjoying herself. My psychologist friends were both smiling like cheshire cats watching the ceremony unfold. The reception hall was packed with people from near and far. Everybody had come to see the show, and it was a good one. The situation quickly began to devolve when my parents were supposed to repeat after the robot and say their wedding vows. The robot suit had a voice modulation device that was designed to distort his words and make it sound like he was a lost in space. So there was a whole bunch of whizzing and lights and weird space-like noise drowning out everything he said. It was completely impossible for anyone to decipher what the robot was saying.

My sweet and wonderful parents, who so dearly loved each other until death did they part, couldn’t understand him. They didn’t know what to say to each other, nor when to say “I do!” Daddy finally just shrugged his shoulders, threw his hands up, and told the robot, “Aw hell, we can’t understand you, so let’s just forget about this part! Why don’t you go play with the kids for a while?” The wedding vow renewal ceremony was a flop, but the party was a hit, at least with the kids it was anyway.