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Dear Eddie,

everybody needs community. In family memory, this will always be the summer of Buzz, the Turkey Vulture who joined the family at the lake in Michigan. He might have been attracted by the fish cleaning station; vultures are known for their noses after all, but he appeared on the deck railing one morning. He was neither shy nor aggressive with people or cats.  Buzz would come down to the house most mornings. He did make a pretty big rustle in the bushes and did startle me if I stepped out the door without first thinking about him.He and the cats would greet each other. If he needed to pass by, he would detour in a three-foot loop around them with no apparent hurry. One day, the guys killed a Blue Jay, and Buzz showed up for lunch. As we learned, Buzz had a lame wing and could loft off a perch for short bursts, but he could not lift to fly. Sadly, no soaring on the thermals with his family, but he found us– a multi-species flock.

You and I had several conversations about flocks, about how flocks are comprised and the safety they provide for their members. That led to conversations about our flocks, our several communities. For many years, we have organized our living into our couple, our family, our faith community, and our marriage enrichment community.

In the beginning, we were invited into a marriage enrichment group. Later, whenever we moved, and we did that a lot, we learned to actively seek out community to support us in our marriage journey. There have been different couples at different times. In sharing their experiences with us, they increased our awareness of blessings and never left us desperately alone with our challenges. Early learning about living married, challenges with jobs and security, staying connected while raising children, loving our parents through their lifetimes, parenting adult children, staying connected as we have grown older—we have done none of these in isolation.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for being the kind of man who is open to listening to my feelings and experiences and to cross-learning from the experiences of other couples. Thank you for being open to working with me to make our marriage better through the years. I love you.   Sylvia

Darling Sylvia, you are my only one. Beefsteak tomatoes 3 inches across, cut 3/8 of an inch thick, sandwiched  between leaves of curly red basil, topped with 2 strips of bacon on whole wheat bread slathered with mayonnaise, cucumbers in sour cream, sweet green (Big Bertha) peppers filled with sausage and rice, zucchini nuked in the microwave and topped with sour cream, bacon bits and salsa for lunch,–these are the scents and savory flavors of a mellow summer. Our children are safe. The grands are thriving. The other night, they wrote their names with glowing sparklers against a star filled sky. Fireflies in the backyard oaks blinked out the message – “Is there an unknown only one in the vicinity?”  Sylvia, we are in quiet waters in between life’s inevitable storms.  I am soaking up the peacefulness of the now.

Last week at Chamber House, I found the right bracelet to celebrate our 48^th anniversary. Getting the right gift to express how precious you are is a daunting task for me.  Your smile when you opened the box was my reward.  Your response was a lot more pleasant than your response to the box of my favorite chocolates after we started Weight Watchers.  You are one fine looking grandma.

In two weeks, we will both be seventy.  I never imagined that our seventies would be so good.  We have tickets tomorrow for the Rome Braves.  We will hold hands and watch this year’s 4^th of July fireworks.  I am so glad that 52 years ago I got fresh with you in Dr. Potter’s bonehead chemistry lab.  You were, and are, too much for this Grayling boy to resist. Like the fireflies in the backyard, I blinked, but I got lucky and found my only one.

I love you Grandma – Eddie Bert

Darling Eddie, Honeymoons are on my mind. Forty-eight years ago this evening, you and I headed out together. We stayed in our Grayling apartment, left pansies on our dining table, worshiped in the family pew, and took off on the first of many honeymoons.  Across the UP we went, stopping at The Mystery Spot at St. Ignace and a motel in Engadine. I remember HEE HAW on a fuzzy television and the radio repeatedly proclaiming the summer’s anthem “Come On, Let’s Do It in the Road.” We had three days to get to Minneapolis, find a place to live in September, and return to work. And, we were away and alone together.

In all the years hence, we have reminded ourselves of the necessity of time away together. When we wrote our Marriage Growth Plan for the year, we promised each other two consecutive nights away alone every quarter. And, we were gifted last month with two whole weeks at our Michigan cabin.

It was a terrific honeymoon. You mowed the grass so my ankles would not get chiggers. We did a few spring chores, but, mostly, we chilled together. Lots of cuddling by the fire, sleeping late if we wanted to, reading multiple “trash novels” from our local church rummage sale, cooking for two, and hanging out in the hammock. We began the summer’s twosome Scrabble tournament. We day tripped to Ontario and froze as Lake Huron impressively blew and crashed. And, to crown it all, the temperatures rose high enough to dare each other into the lake, not once, but twice. Once through the cold shock, the water was like silk on our skin, and you said, “The best part of swimming with you is the kissing.” The person who invented swim noodles is a genius.

Let’s never forget the magic of twosome time away from our normal routine. We aren’t bored at home, but away is a tonic for our twosome.

I love you. Here’s to many more wonderful honeymoons. Happy Anniversary to you, my personal Jack Pine Stump Jumper!       Love, Sylvia

Darling Sylvia, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.  It’s early morning.  You are a slug a bug in bed.  Last night you couldn’t sleep.  I’ve just spent two glorious hours in the garden.  I fertilized the blueberries.  The Vigoro “Beautiful Gardens Since 1924” label on the fertilizer bag triggered thoughts of Dad.  If you do something, son, do it well.  Have some pride.  If it is worth doing, do it well.  I was guilty of leaving the Vigoro in the bag all winter.  Dad’s rules for life paralleled his rules for his garden. Fertilizer was not left in the shed all winter; it was spread in the fall.  A sprayer half full of Malathion was to be used.  It killed no bugs sitting in the shed.  The plants in the garden were to be tilled; otherwise, they would be smothered out by weeds.  A garden not watered dries up.  If you have a garden, son, tend it or don’t do it at all.

What I am talking about, of course, is our marriage.  Our marriage is our life’s garden.  Words of love not said, acts of love not completed, and the investment of time and energy not taken do not grow our marriage.  I want to grow our marriage. It’s worth doing well.

I love you because of who you are and the grace you bring into my life.  Since that moment at Lumberjack Park in 1968, when you said yes, I have known that you think I can become a better person than I think I can.  I love you because you always have my back.  Of course, your sleepy almost seventy-year-old body turns on my seventy-year-old body as much as it did when it was nineteen. You are beautiful when you sleep.

Love Eddie Bert, aka Garden Boy

Dear Eddie, I am “the perfect age.” Thank you for being my partner.  I felt you cringe under my right elbow when my orthopedist’s Physician’s Assistant, surely no older than twelve, gushed, “Oh, seventy, you are the perfect age. The life on these new knees is 25-30 years.”  Yep, that translates to “the knee will outlast you, old lady.” Oh, I like these blunt science kids; you taught  so many over the years. But, admittedly, my sense of humor has been a little ragged the last few weeks.

Deciding to replace the troublesome knee, that has limited my mobility and our walking together for way too long, was one of those pain in the neck, or pain in the knee, adult decisions made with the head and not with the heart. And, people are right; for the first few weeks, I have been convinced it was the dumbest thing I have ever done. I may be on the edge of seeing the good to come. Maybe my sense of humor will recover.

Caring friends gifted us with Lucy and Charlie Brown, (with strings attached). The punch line inside the card is from I Peter 1:6 as presented in The Message: “You have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime.” If that ain’t the truth? And, then the words, “Just letting you know I care, no strings attached.”

You, my dear husband, are showing wonderful care for me, in spite of our individual and couple aggravations. We talk about our Love Languages, ala Dr. Gary Chapman. Surely, in these weeks, my need for Acts of Service has been paramount. Thank you for every pillow shifted, ice contraption refilled, cold drink proffered. Thank you for all the company to Physical Therapy, grocery store trips made, stairs climbed, and kid errands completed. I caught myself responding with gratefulness when I heard the sounds of you emptying the dish washer drifting from the kitchen. And, thank you for your body comfort wrapped around this wincing person. We are so used to being a team, and my perfect age part of the team has been laid low. I love you, darling Eddie.

Listen to Me, Eddie Bert! Darling Sylvia, Listen to me, Eddie Bert! How many times over the last fifty-two years have you made that simple request. Listening has never been my strong suit. I should know better. The Good Lord gave me two ears, two eyes, two hands, two knees, and two hearts (yes, we really have two hearts – one that pumps to the lungs and a second that pumps blood from the lungs to the rest of the body (Leo De Vinci).

The mouth is a solitary organ. Any idiot knows that a husband needs to listen more and talk less. Listening has always been difficult for me. First, I need to take the time. The job, yard, garden, greenhouse, Lions football game, our kids (Charity Jean and Nathan), our grands (Abby, Archer and Aryn), our cats (Peter and Sammy), my hunger, my energy level, my needs are important to me. If I listen to you, I’ll have to stop what I am doing.  You know by now how easily distracted I can be.

Oh, all right. I’ll admit that when you say Listen to me, Eddie Bert, I get a little scared. The we that is our relationship is the pearl beyond price in my life. Listen to me, Eddie Bert!  I sit down facing you, put my knees outside of yours (it keeps me from running away), take both of your hands in mine, check for hives to see if I am in big trouble, then I look into your eyes and listen to you, not only with my two ears but with my two hearts.

What are your feelings? What is on your heart?  How can I make a difference?  You are important enough for me to listen to you..  The We of Us rules my world.

Loving you, Eddie Bert

Dear Eddie,  Reposo is a gift. Most marriages could use one. The best reminder of our wonderful trip to Italy is the adoption of reposo into our daily life. We talk a great deal about the need for rest and peace in our busy lives. I can get all heady about spiritual rest for my soul and about refreshing changes of pace, like romantic trips. But, the rest I like first is the physical and emotional rest of reposo with you.

When we returned from Italy, we said that if a whole culture could stop business for a reposo in the middle of the day, we could, too. We are, after all, retired without the strictures of a work place. But, if we let it happen, any day will eat away our time for stopping for rest. Volunteer this and that can fill a day as quickly as the office ever did. Now, I treasure the mid day time for you and me, piled up on the bed with two cats and a blanket. It is truly permissible for us to take that time. We are the ones who must make sure we get it.

We guard reposo as necessary, almost sacred. We plan for it, as in “when are we having reposo today?” I finish errands so I can get home to reposo with you. We keep in touch with each other so that “junk” between us doesn’t make distracting tension. We turn off dryer-finished buzzers and make sure the cats are inside so someone isn’t meowing at the window. We put down task lists. And when you drop off to sleep, and begin to “purr,” I make myself stay bodily settled, which is against my obsessive inclination. And, when the “school bus time alarm” sounds, we are thankful for our reposo. We are refreshed, good with each other, and able to get to bedtime with grandchildren, through homework, basketball, hip-hop and all.

Reposo, a gift to ourselves and a gift to each other. What a deal!

Darling Sylvia,  Thank you for helping me shake the seasonal blues.  I had returned to my dark place.  In that pit, I grieved for the loss of dad thirty-six years ago and this year’s loss of important Better Marriage stalwarts Roberta, Jim and J.P.  You did not belittle my grief but reminded of J.P.’s pledge to keep on keeping on.

I just finished a wonderfully cold, windy, sunshine blessed tour of campus.  I could not help myself; I was glad to be alive.   I passed the Falany Performing Arts Center and realized it would not be there if Judy Mac had not come back from Houston to spend her life investing in her students.  I rounded the building and looked across Lake Mullenix at the Fincher Art Center and thought that it would not be there if Curtis had not decided to stay put.  I walked to the chapel and through the trees spotted the new Dobbs science addition.  It stands because, in 1988, I decided not to go back into  industry at Exxon.  My students needed me more than I needed my anger. What we did with our lives at Reinhardt University was worthy.

We still have work.  I need to work with you in loving our children and grandchildren and our faith and marriage enrichment families. Having you beside me has pulled me out of my self-indulgence.   We need to keep on keeping on and, in the process, leave our loved ones with a little less pain and a little more joy. This new year will add new steps to our dance and new joys to share.

Love You Much – Eddie Bert

Dear Eddie, Let’s talk about living out loud. We are a little frayed by recent heavy stuff—heavy good and heavy sad. We are grateful for the couples who have lived their lives out loud in front of us.

People love weddings. But, after couples get married, they are left on their own to learn how to be married. Forty years ago, we were blessed with a supportive marriage enrichment community. Precious friends near and far have shared their living with us–their happiness, their worries, their challenges, their laughter, their frustrations, their essentials. Their sometimes eloquent and sometimes hard plain statements have become touchstones for us. Their living informed our living. They have lived, and, yes, some of them have died, out loud.

Our friends’ living out loud offered us a range of emotions, wishes, viewpoints and possibilities that we did not have on our own. We have faced little in our marriage that has not been somehow previewed by others going before us. When we face new challenges, we have resources. Because these special couples broke the “keep it to yourself” marital taboo, we feel less alone and, certainly, less crazy.

Thank you for being open to growing together. Thank you for listening with me to all the people who have lived and are living their lives out loud.

Loving you (out loud)

Sylvia

Darling Sylvia,  Loving in the Now.   Back in 1966, we began dreaming about what the future would hold.  Were we going to be together forever? How would we make a living?  Where would we live?  What would our family be like?  We had no past, the present was sometimes overwhelming, and the future was full of  scary unknowns.  I discovered Ed Ames while we were living in our little house on Sharon Avenue in Prospect Park in Minneapolis.   The words touched my soul; I cried at the thought of a life together, well loved.

When the snow is on the roses
When the summer stars are gone
One more summer will be over
But our love will still go on

Our life together with its moves, jobs, and ups and downs has been a journey.  Our commitment to to keep talking with each other has meant that we learned to plan and flex to a degree  we never thought possible.  Now, my hair is white like the snow, and that dreamed of future is our cherished past.   I still love you, and you still love me. …. Eddie B.