I forgive Mom for wearing no Tie o’ the Day in this photo. In fact, she gets a complete pass on any missing neckwear until she turns 90 on September 26.
As far as I’ve been able to calculate, Dad took this snapshot of Mom some time in 1948, a few months before they got married. The location is somewhere on the Utah west desert—probably close to Baker, NV. They were both 17, and they were ga-ga for each other. Mom says they still are. I have no doubt. Smitten, the both of them.
After Dad died in 2007, Mom received a sympathy card from “one of the Lyman girls” (I’ve temporarily forgotten which one.) who grew up in the house directly across the street from our home. She wrote that watching Mom and Dad as she was growing up was like watching a love story unfold. “The Lyman girl” wrote that once—when she was well past middle age herself, and Mom and Dad were old and gray—she had been at Top’s Cafe in Delta, where Dad sat at the counter chatting with his coffee buddies. When Mom happened to walk in with her gang for lunch, Dad’s blue eyes immediately lit up. It looked to “the Lyman girl” like all Dad could see at Top’s was Mom. I saw that very look between them more times than I can count. It was the tenor of their way with each other.
I was lucky and blessed to grow up in a house with parents who were so clearly and openly in love. So many of my childhood friends weren’t raised amidst the security that comes from watching their parents take good and constant care of each other. From my vantage point, even in their rare bickering, Mom and Dad never said or did things that diminished each other’s dignity. Their respect for each other always ruled the day.