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Darling Sylvia, Yesterday, while getting dressed for church, it took me four tries to tie a Windsor knot.  I was in a macho mood and decided to wear a tie.  I delved into my ancient collection and found the perfect tie (a gray with pink stars) to match my new pink oxford cloth shirt.  It was almost Easter, and I was about to surprise you with my refined sense of taste.

I stood in front of mirror, and the morning disintegrated. I had forgotten the Windsor.  I was humiliated.  I had been taught the art of the Windsor by Stanley Joe in 1957.  No more clip-on ties for me.  He told me, that in learning the Windsor, I had reached the first level of Robertson studliness.   It took me until the middle of the Palm Sunday sermon to decide to reframe my earlier humiliation.

I had forgotten an insignificant skill, but I realized how vividly I do remember the taste of our first kiss in front of Newberry Hall and the carving of our names in the sugar maple at Lumberjack Park.  I remember the first (and unfortunately not the last) time you found it necessary to lecture me about my attitude.  More importantly, I remember the moment you walked down the aisle on your dad’s arm, and I realized what a drop-dead gorgeous woman I was about to marry.  I remember you holding me after the recess of my PhD prelims. I remember the moments of the births of Charity and Nate. I remember you arriving in the Pinto to the Mobil parking lot after I had been fired.  I remember holding you tight at your dad’s funeral.  I remember tears running down my cheeks as that red shit went into your arm and I realized I might be losing you.  I do remember.

To hell with the Windsor; There are more important things to remember.

Loving you – Eddie Bert

_{Darling Eddie, There, you did it again. You made something beautiful; more accurately, you made something else beautiful in my world.  are dependable to show appreciation of me, to be there when I need you, and to look toward a future together and participate in making that future. Today, I find you dependable to bring beauty into my world.}

_{I don’t know anyone who has as many beautiful bouquets in their house all year long as we do. Who has orchids in the bathroom, snapdragons in the kitchen, blooming cacti on the mantel?  We do. I know that when you see beauty, you want to share it with me. I have been hearing about the swelling Catylea buds for days; I can’t wait until you bring those plants to the house to share.}

_{We have had a WET Winter and Spring. We thought it would never stop raining. And then the mud. Oh, the mud. Now, finally, some days of sunshine.  In spite of the rain, you have brought beauty into this yard. Maybe because of the rain, the bulbs you planted last fall have put on a gorgeous long-lasting show. We have had weeks of daffodils, weeks of yellow, purple and white crocus, tiny new blue hyacinths to join the old-fashioned grape hyacinths along the drive. Now, the tulips are in gay profusion in front of the house. Yesterday, I found those tiny red tulips with the white daffodils by the pond. I laughed. I remembered the bag with that set of colors that was one more Eddie Aldi impulse buy along with our groceries.}

_{Today, you are once again out in the garden. You have prepared the soil with bone shaking days with the tiller. You have built this year’s addition in the continuing war with the deer who munched your roses. The electric fence will or will not help, but not for your lack of trying. You are setting out the first transplants from the greenhouse. The bare dirt is going to bring forth color for the farm market. You will see that we have a beautiful world until first frost next fall. I will enjoy every bit of your contribution and our granddaughter will once again exclaim, “I love it when the garden is full of color and we can see all of the beautiful butterflies!”}

_{Thank you, sweet beauty provider. I love you.}

_Sylvia

Darling Sylvia, I heard moans as I got out of the car.  I looked around and realized the sounds were my own.  I am 71 and not 22.  I had been day dreaming about our escape to Red Wing in February of 1970.

We had been snowbound in Minneapolis for weeks.  Cabin fever had set in.  We were looking for adventure on the first sunny Saturday morning in a month.  We drove south to Red Wing and discovered the confluence of the Chippewa and Mississippi.  The turbulence caused by their joining created the only ice free zone for miles.  The oxygenated waters were filled with swirling carp and suckers.  The eagles from eighty miles around had joined to harvest the fish.  I had never witnessed a flock of twenty plus bald eagles in a fishing frenzy.  It was a marvelous moment, and I was sharing it in the now with you.  That I had it to share with you, not just the eagles, was what made the moment magical.  I could taste what glorious adventures we would share in the years to come.

          Being 71 and not 22 is under rated. This morning as you drink the barium shake (that tastes like mocha–NOT) in preparation for your kidney scan, I am 71 and not 22.  This is not the type of adventure I had anticipated.  I am glad we still have other kinds of adventures.  But this morning, there is no place I would rather be than here with you.  At 71, the fact that I still have moments to share with you makes the time in this waiting room as precious as watching eagles fish.

 Love You, Eddie Bert

Dear Eddie: We have a wonderful dining table. We have probably spent years of our lives at the table. We discovered the table in your parents’ basement the summer we married. It was dusty and covered with Contac Paper. We were told it was a hand-me-down from the Puffer’s parsonage. We later determined that it was a product of the Robbins Table Company, founded in 1873 in Owosso, Michigan, and was fashioned of oak with an ash top. For us, the table was not an antique but the beginning of “our” furniture. We loaded it on our U-Haul trailer with Aunt Nellie’s rollaway bed and the barrel backed chair from my home. In years to come, the table traveled from Minnesota to Alberta, to Texas, then to Michigan and back to Texas and Oklahoma, moving finally to Georgia over 30 years ago.

At the table, you and I learned about cherishing and appreciating each other. We learned about sharing each other’s days in evening conversations. We had a few memorable “Hair in my Soup” fights at the table and learned how to repair those fights and even how to avoid some of them. We made “family” around the table for holidays when we lived far from our biological families. We welcomed high chairs and, very quickly it seemed, high schoolers. Around the table, we have hosted family birthdays and Christmas Eves, youth groups, church picnics, and countless college student gatherings. In the last few years, there are six or seven very much loved people at the table. On most days, our multigenerational family begins its days with vitamins, allergy meds and breakfast at the table. We enjoy the less busy evenings when we all can gather for supper together.

I had been puzzled and a little annoyed by your insistence on downsizing the table when the kids left for the weekends or school breaks. I somehow thought it was a bother or felt devaluing of the larger family. Because you were adamant, I kept pretty much quiet and thought that at least it made a good excuse to vacuum between the table legs. But, now, I get it. You value our larger family group, but you want to honor our twosome as well. You clarified for me, and I can hear you. I can get excited about setting our space as we did for the years before and between kids. We eat at the table together, corner-corner with me to your left. We don’t default to eating in front of the TV. And, when the gang is expected, we happily anticipate by adding the two leaves that have been hidden inside our special table.  I love you, Eddie Bert. See you at the table.

Love, Sylvia

Darling Sylvia, It was a frigid fall morning in Georgia, and I fell on the slippery  ice.  The bank had not turned off its automatic sprinklers, the sidewalk was uphill, and I was double stepping to get my heart rate up.  I noticed the water, and I thought I was being careful but I missed noticing the slippery sheet of ice coating the sidewalk.  I went down in a flash.  My reflexes went into gear, and I threw my right arm backward to cushion my fall.  I  went down on my right side.  It hurt like hell, and I flashed back to my fall from the balcony when I smashed my hip.  I was scared as I rolled over and carefully got to my feet.  I didn’t think anything was broken.  The pain subsided.  My back hurt, but I was upright, and I could breathe. This Michigan boy had forgotten how slippery ice can be.

Like falling on the ice this morning, l sometimes fall back into old habits with you when I feel threatened, tired, cranky.  Last week, when we were putting together the steel arbor, I heard your suggestion as bossy.  I forgot to slow down the action and figure out what you were really saying. I made an ugly comment.   You were wounded, and I saw it on your face. I escalated and became uglier. You made a repair attempt. I refused to recognize your attempt. I am not attractive when I pout. Not being honest about my pinch and instead being hurtful is a habit I thought I had unlearned eighteen years ago during a remarkably vivid interchange on a trip back from the Smithsonian.  Once again, I reverted to my early caveman.  Like forgetting to watch out for slippery ice, last week I forgot to look for the source of my pinch and reverted to escalation. Evidently, the course between old and new habits is also slippery. You deserve better.  I am so sorry.  I am grateful that you view me as a worthy work in progress.   Love you more than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Eddie Bert

Dear Eddie, Sometimes, I feel like we are being chased by lists. Lists help me to organize, and lists work for pleasant tasks, but being chased by lists messes with my sense of calm. I don’t want to add to your anxiety, but I am certainly happy to have you as a partner in facing the lists of the less than pleasant parts of living.

Lists make demands in different ways. We laughed about the difference between the window sticker in your ‘91 Mighty Max truck and the digital panel in the 2015 Sonata. Your sticker quietly suggests that you are about 100 miles short of needing an oil change. The Sonata computer, on the other hand, warned us as we approached the scheduled service date; with every start, we were told “You are due for service in — miles.” When Zero day arrived, the panel kicked up a Diamond Exclamation Point warning. With every ignition, it threatened, “You are – miles overdue for service.” And the warning indicator sat there until the service was completed. I am the list maker and the rule keeper; your attitude toward problem solving safeguards our coupleness in dealing with the lists, in whatever manner they present..

With lists of recurring responsibilities, you either put up with, go along with, or share in what needs to be done. If I can take care of the tasks like paying bills on time, keeping up with biannual bills like insurances and taxes, you let me do it, and you thank me for the attention I pay to the detail. When we both have to be inconvenienced by the same things like regular blood work and flu shots, we accompany one another. When it is your thing like pacemaker checks, or my thing like eye specialists, we express our appreciation for the company given. We can grouse about the necessity of these tasks, but you affirm that we are a team. It may seem dumb but we even have a Shingles shot date for January when the resupply comes in. Yes, it is on the list again even though we were responsible about that issue ten years ago.

There are some doozies In the list of financial things that chase us. They threaten our sense of security. Some of them look innocuous enough like painting the house. We sat for years, commenting on the soot darkening the living room ceiling from our enjoyable wintertime fires. But dipping into liquid funds to do something about it was a major effort. Likewise, not everyone drives vehicles until they drop. Even using liquid funds to buy pre-owned vehicles may take us years of “if-then-whens.” Thanks for having learned that I have fiscal security buttons, You honor them and me while also being insistent that we move ahead even if it is difficult.

And, heavens, let the lists chasing us be about more than money and threaten our life together in the ultimate sense, we can put something off ad infinitum. Thank you so much for repeatedly having the painful conversations with me. Updating wills and checking on beneficiaries takes saying words like, “If —- should predecease, …” Yuck! But we are responsible grownups, and you are my excellent teammate. Let’s march right in to the refrigerator and put some stars and “way to gos” on that Growth Plan. We get some big check marks this six months. The paint is renewed, the car is sweet, the wills and beneficiaries are updated—for now, anyway. Together, I am confident we will deal with what comes. I love you. Sylvia

Darling Sylvia,  Our marriage, like my football,  is a participatory sport.    Neither is a game for the timid.  There can be no half way measures. In our marriage, we wholeheartedly participate. Our marriage  is a participatory sport. No watching from the stadium seats is tolerated.

Last Saturday’s 50^th reunion of Alma College’s 1967-68 Conference Championship Teams was a sight to behold.  Twenty-five of the forty members attended.  They were very pleased to see that teammates were still vertical.  Their memories of events 50 years ago were more vivid than what had happened the previous week.  Some of the stories were even true.

During the drive home to Georgia, I kept thinking of what had been told.  It’s amazing that I came up with the notion that what I learned as a member of the squad is used every day in our marriage.  The first issue was commitment.  I was all in for the team.  Commitment to our marriage is not half way.  Being a member of a team or marriage means that it is more important than self.  Sometimes you lead and sometimes you follow.

In our marriage, I need to speak for self and listen for understanding.   In Robby’s Raiders, the kickoff team, we knew the rules and stayed in our own lanes.  On the defensive team, I needed to know where Dillingham, Shrope, Roger, and Zinns were at all times.  Their chatter told me where they were and what they were going to do.  As a couple, we have had to learn skills and unlearn habits in order to keep our messages clear.  We have learned to trust each other’s intent and actions.

In football, we practiced our actions until they were automatic.  Practice did not make us perfect, but it did make us better. In marriage, the practicing of speaking and listening skills is fundamental. We never lose the need to practice both.  Practice is hard work, but it does make us better.

On a brisk fall football Saturday in 1969, I saw your tears. You were looking out of the window of the laundry across the street from the University of Minnesota Golden Gopher Stadium.  They were playing Michigan State, and the crowds were gathering.  You asked, “Don’t you ever want to go to the game?”  Not for the first or last time you mystified me.  I replied, “No, football for me was a participatory sport. I was on the field or on the bench but never in the stands.”   After all these years, I am so glad that you have made our marriage a participatory sport.  You have never allowed me to move to the stands.

Love, Eddie Bert

Dear Eddie:
You have a knack. What a funny word but the proper one. You have “an acquired or natural skill” at performing a task. You really have a knack with flowers, and you have a knack with me.

Dr. Rob’s Garden Bouquets is making regular appearances at the Waleksa Farmers’ Market. You provide a bright spot for strollers as well as for those who adopt your creations. Daily, you sweat through multiple sets of clothes weeding in the garden. Wednesdays, you cut so the flowers can “harden.” On Wednesday nights, you assemble color and filler. Zinnias, sunflowers, cosmos, and celosia are joined with mint, basil, pampas or whatever else looks pretty with them. One week, the palette is pink, another orange, another yellow.

You have a knack with flowers. You also have a knack for including me. I have never been required to sweat in the garden to have your attention. Sometimes, you like for me to sit and read in your vicinity, but, either way, flowers appear by the kitchen sink, on the mantel, in the bathrooms. I just add the “Ooo, Ahhh, Gee, Wow” factor. This summer, I am happy to be part of your market experience.

By 7:30 Thursday mornings, we are setting up the stall—the canopy, the table, the vases, the buckets of flowers. We started with two chairs, and then, one morning, you loaded the wicker lovereat instead. And that showed your knack for doing something different to connect with me. It happened to be an atypical cold, rainy August day. You cuddled me up to keep me warm and dry. We were not comfortable, but I was comforted. Now, the loveseat always goes to market, rain or shine.

Your knack for connecting with me changed an already joint experience into a romantic experience. Changing the loveseat for the chairs makes the 9 to 1 time block a long date. We get smiles from some. We are kidded by some. It is all good. We have learned that doing something different together turns up the romance. Who would have thought that something different could be a change of seating? Thank you, dearest.

Love, Sylvia

Darling Sylvia, Living in the moment and intentionally putting ourselves in position where miracles can happen are skills that we have honed together.  They are gifts you gave me that keep on giving.   Forrest Gump said, “Life is like a box of chocolates.” It has been a summer of sweet surprises, but when you returned from 8^th grade open house last night, I knew any lazy, hazy days of summer were over.

For real, our days this summer have been anything but lazy. With your guidance, we put ourselves in position to make memories with our three grandchildren.  We have intentionally invested in our grands and in we two.  Our time at the lake was lived fully in the moment and will be remembered to tell and retell.  We watched our boy’s canoe being hauled across the lake by his first big  large mouthed bass.  We stood in awe when he cleaned the bass and discovered the blue gill in its stomach.  We baked silver turtle pocket meals in the fire pit and feasted.  We celebrated that this year our baby could swim like a muskrat. She and her brother played freighters and tugboats instead of battleships, and big sister sang the score of Hamilton while treading water just for the heck of it.  We caravaned to Attica for ice cream at the Chilly Cow accompanied by the harmony of silly bus stop songs.

And then, there was Greenfield Village. In 1957, you went to a Girl Scout overnight there. While courting in 1967, you took me, and you gave me Luther Burbank’s Garden Cottage library list one Christmas.   As young parents, we visited with our children and your mother. This year, we once again went to the roundhouse and rode the train with its steam locomotive belching smoke. Afterwards, I watched Big Sis pick cinders out of your hair and wipe a sooty moustache off Little Sis’s face. Like the Grinch my heart doubled in size.  I rode in the back of a 1928 Model T and listened as Mr. Mechanic in the front seat with the driver asked questions about H frames. We rode the hundred-year-old carousel.   I listened to our kids, who know everything from books and television, rave about our visit to the Wright Brothers’ Bicycle Shop and Edison’s Menlo Park Lab. Greenfield Village became part of who they are.  In our sharing, we are connected in our experiences. You put us all in position to link past, present and future.

At five-thirty this morning, while letting out Peter the cat, I discovered the light from the red moon was so bright that I could see my moon shadow on the deck.  This summer, our moon shadows became part of our grands. I hope they will have those gifts for as long as they live.

Love you, Eddie Bert

Dear Eddie, A great pleasure in my life is watching you. Over the years, cameras have repeatedly captured my rapt expression as I watch you carrying on. You could be talking to friends or students. The look on my face says, “Oh my, where is he going with this? But, ain’t he somethin’!” In the Dollar General the other day, I spoke to a former student. He asked about you, of course. He said, “Dr. Rob would start off talking like a normal person, and then the botanist would kick in, and I would not have a clue.” And, when the Dr. Rob persona kicks in, I sometimes wonder “What on Earth” And, I find you have touched a heart, eased a pain, brought a memory or a smile. I love watching you talk.

This morning at the cabin, in the cool after a long rainy night, you are asleep on the long couch. One cat is behind your knees; the other is balanced on your hip. You rolled over when I moved out of the cradle of your arms. I think of watching you piled up with grandbabies on that couch, and I remember you with our kids. I remember a baby CJ sleeping on your chest, and I remember a small Nate sleeping in your crotch with ABear and you saying you once slept like that with your dad in Walter Cronkite days. I smile, watching you sleep.

And I watch you work. Once it was rewriting lectures every summer. More recently, it is you working in the garden for hours every day since last frost. We joke about how many sets of clothes Papa sweated through today. We also have the prettiest flowers and the tastiest table imaginable. Facebook kicked up a memory of Aryn eating white raspberries out of one hand and broccoli out of the other. And you are playing with the Farm Market again this year. I adore watching you teaching Abby how to make garden bouquets with the right kind and number of stems and the fillers of mint or basil or oregano. Your mama taught you well. I love watching you work.

So, in this week which began with Father’s Day and includes our 49^th wedding anniversary, let me assure you that I am still watching you, and I am fascinated!

Love, Sylvia