The first time my parents met was in Groom Creek. That was a tiny community near Prescott, Arizona, high in the mountains and cool beneath tall pine trees, where Valley dwellers escaped the heat and spent their summers. Dad's family owned a cabin in Groom Creek. Mom's family had just moved from Utah. Their friends invited them to come stay with them at their cabin the first summer they lived in Arizona.
Groom Creek was a lovely place. Many Mesa families had cabins and there were lots of kids to play with. Dad was among the 'older' kids, the ones who hung out playing ball and being cool, but he was nice to everyone, and invited the younger kids to join in the games whenever he was playing. Mom, who was only twelve, didn't like the stuck up older boys, but she thought dad was nice, even if he was 14.
A few years later when she was a freshman at Mesa High School, mom noticed dad again. By this time he was a junior, popular and important, but he was still nice. She also noticed that he had the bluest eyes! They were the color of a summer sky, and really cute!
Mom kept noticing dad all the way through high school and beyond. After he got out of the army (World War II ended just before he turned 18 so he only served a year) Dad went on a mission to the Eastern states for two years. While he was gone mom wrote him occasional letters, and even sent packages of goodies.
The young people in Mesa got together and made records to send to the missionaries. Dad kept his for years, and I used to love listening to the kids sing hymns, then to the kids as they each said "hi". Some of them were more talkative than others. Uncle Ray (dad's younger brother) described learning that their family finally had a girl. (Dad and Ray were two of five brothers with no sisters. Their oldest brother had two sons, then their next brother had two boys.) Ray said when he heard their brother finally had a baby girl he almost fell out of bed. Then he said when he heard she had red hair he did fall out of bed. That made all the other kids on the record laugh.
I would always listen closely to the record after Uncle Ray told his story because I knew that mom's voice was coming up pretty soon, but I would almost miss it each time. All she said was, "Hi, Ralph. Hope you're doing well," or something like that. It was such a disappointment! But I would keep on listening, because a few kids later someone said, "Eleanor's been sleeping with someones picture under her pillow," and I was pretty sure who's picture it must have been.
Dad came home from his mission in the fall of 1950, with his mind made up to marry mom. They dated a few months, then in February he asked mom to marry him. They were married in the Arizona Temple on April 16th, 1951, 61 years ago today, and guess where they went on their honeymoon? Back to Groom Creek!
This time it was the middle of April, not the middle of the summer, and kind of cold, so of course they needed to build a fire to keep the cabin warm. The next morning dad took the ashes out of the fireplace and dumped them in the back yard. Perhaps his mind wasn't on details that morning, because he didn't check to make sure there were no live coals, and when he and mom came back from a walk they found a small fire burning up the underbrush. They had to work fast to keep from celebrating their wedding by starting a forest fire.
When I was a teenager I decided one year that mom and dad needed an anniversary party. Mother quickly assured me that they didn't want a party with guests and presents, and I didn't have any money to give them a big celebration, anyway, but I still wanted to do something. I got my little sisters to help, and we made a homemade anniversary party for our parents out of what we had. There were lots of white petunias growing in the flower beds, so I picked bunches of them and arranged them on the table. They sure smelled sweet. I'd never realized how good petunias smelled before then. I made and decorated my first wedding cake, using a decorating set mom gave me for Christmas, which we put in the middle of the dining room table as the centerpiece. We took mom's wedding dress out of the plastic and tissue paper it was stored in and put it on an old dress makers dummy mom kept pushed into the back of a closet. That became the other decoration for our little anniversary party. When dad came home from work that evening we made him and mother sit in the place of honor at the table, and served them cake and punch, and had a lovely anniversary party even without other guests.
The next party we gave them was almost 30 years later, in 2001, when they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. They still didn't want a big party with guests and presents, but all six of us children and our spouses took them out to dinner at the Land Mark Restaurant. It was kind of fun to celebrate their anniversary at the Land Mark, because it was the church where mom and dad held their wedding reception all those years ago, now renovated into an upscale restaurant.
I wish I could give my parents an anniversary party this year, or at least hugs and kisses and a bouquet of white petunias. I miss them both so much. Instead, I'll have to settle for putting new flowers at the cemetery, but I think they will understand. I love you, mom and dad.
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