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Ellemeno:
Actually, it's the only thing I've ever read on here that I think I'll share with my husband.

delalluvia:
This piece allowed me to think of how marriages used to be and how, I hope, some still are and all aspire to be.

It also brought to my mind a quote out of a terrific little book.  I have it somewhere but couldn't find it just now to quote, so I'll try to paraphrase as best I remember.

The book is called My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber.  It's in a chapter called, "The car we had to push".  Thurber was writing humorous memoirs but his prose could be both shockingly deadpanned and touchingly poignant all at the same time.  So much so, that I've had this book ever since my sister used to read to me stories out of it as a child.  In this chapter about all the cars his family had, he speaks of one adventure where his father - who never learned to drive and knew nothing of cars - was being chauffered on a Sunday drive by his older son and the author who were teenagers at the time.  To play a trick on their father, who always expected the car to do something dangerous, the older son rigged a canvas under the car loaded up with junk metal, so when he pulled a string, it would all fall into the road with a big crash and scare his father.

Well, the trick worked and Thurber wrote of it, "If I could have anything in my life to live over, it would be that moment.

But I don't think I can, now."

That single line has always touched me.  A reminder of the moments in life, sweet, swift and fleeting that go by every day and that we only realize their preciousness when they're long gone.

injest:

--- Quote from: DavidinHartford on April 06, 2007, 08:22:42 pm ---Great story.  Thanks for sharing that.  Of course I'm crying now!

[snip]


--- End quote ---

{{{David}}}

 :'( :'( :'(

that is beautiful...how lucky your parents are to have you as a son...

dot-matrix:
Beautiful memoir of your Father David  :'( He sounds like a good man, he was certainly blessed with a fine and loving son.   Thank you for sharing that.

j.U.d.E.:
Del, David! These stories are beautiful! So beautiful!

My parents separated when I was 2. My mother made sure my sister and me kept contact with him and his family, but I grew up without my dad. So, reading these beautiful stories about parent-child relationships make me melt.. and jealous. In real life, I've been really jealous once of an acquainted couple. So much so it hurt. They have three children (2 grown-up boys and a young daughter) and their life seems perfect! I've known them for 15 years now or so and they seem more in love than ever. The boys are out of school and university with good jobs and the little girl the happiest and prettiest that can be! Perfect.

Cars were never a big deal in my family and parent's life. I remember my cousin (mother's side - Eastern Germany), whose parents don't drive at all, having her name put down on a list for a car (a Trabant or some other similar paper car). She was told it could last up to 10 years(!) before she would get one. My father's one sister never learned to drive and my father's other sister had to learn to drive, because her husband - my uncle - lost his left hand as a kid - meddling with WWII explosive's he found.. They have had the car they own now for 18 years.. The longest trip this car ever does is an 1 1/2 hour trip to Catania and back to the village they live in.

My father never had to pass his driver's license. In his days, you just bought your license. Well, that's what I was told. He does drive, but isn't really bothered about what car he owns or drives.

My mother always got very practical cars. Nothing fancy, but comfortable. We used to travel a lot by car. I didn't get car sick or anything and I loved going on holiday, but I didn't particularly like the long driving. I was always asking, right from the start of a trip, if we'd be arriving soon! It drove my mum wild!  :laugh: One of several car trips we took was to go from Belgium to Western Germany and into Eastern Germany (my mum is from that part of Germany). It was the early 80s and the iron curtain still very much in place and check points at every passage to and out of Communist Germany. And in between there was this bit of no man's land. At the time my sister and me - prepubescent - would read the girly magazine "BRAVO" and other magazines. These were forbidden in Eastern Germany - well, not really, but they were 'Capitalist stuff'. Anywhere, we were in the middle of the no-man's land, knowing that the border police would do a total check of our car, when my mother saw those magazines in the back of the car. She started yelling at my sister for bringing them along. I started getting really scared, imagining being taken to prison - I mean I was around 11 or 12 - and then my sister took the magazines and through them high out of the car window into the no man's land! I was panicking and by then I was sure the border police had seen us doing this and would arrest us!

Nothing happened. Well, our car and we were frisked (is that the word), as we know it and we would, but later they would let us drive through! Pfff...

j. U. d. E.

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