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| Margie and Jean, August 3rd, 1941 |
Happy 70th wedding anniversary to my grandmother and grandfather.
70 trips ago of the earth around the sun, my grandmother, Irish, and my grandfather, French, married in Manhattan without her step-mom and father present. They rejected their love and insisted she, Mary (went by Margie her whole life, I only knew Mary was her birth name when I read the direction sign at her wake), marry an Irishman.
She said no, no, no and that she loved Jean, will marry Jean and that's that.
So her parents disowned her. Didn't come to her wedding. Only when they had their first child, my Uncle Bobby, did they come see them and reconnect. Crazy to think in this day and age that European rivalries were that deep then. Most European-Americans today don't even know the nations their ancestors hail from.
But it was so. And their second child was my Aunt Jeanne, and their third and final was my mother Eileen. And she married my father and here I am.
Lucky lucky lucky. So easy to not exist, if you think about it. "Yeah but you'd always have been, even if it was to different parents!" I don't believe that. Yes that suggests that life, all life, is potential merely. Forward motion and connections beyond number, beyond comprehension, writing its story as it goes. Not without intention, but not with predetermined results. (a philosophical discussion for another time)
The real kick of my mentioning this today is this:
At my parents house hangs the framed photo of my grandmother and grandfather on their wedding day 70 years ago today. (above) At some time this morning, on said 70th anniversary, my brother and father were out front of the house looking at my brothers car when WHAM. They heard a big bang from inside the house.
They entered to investigate and found this framed photo on the floor.
Fallen from the wall.
Has this happened before? Not that I can recall. But if it has, not in recent memory. Do sometimes pictures fall? Sure. But the wedding photo of a couple married 70 years ago ON their wedding anniversary 70 years later? It happened. Happened today.
Pure coincidence? Or their spirits combining energy to nudge it off the wall, saying they're with us? Demanding we raise a glass to an important day that led to my mother existing and my father then being in my mothers life, (hard to date a woman that doesn't exist, though I have dated some women like that) which led to MY existence, and to this blog and this very entry about my existence?
Doesn't matter. It happened. And I think its really cool. It DOES make me think of them. And their relationship. And their family. And how without that day, that moment, (and a million others) their sacrifices, their time spent together and with their children, how without all that, I would not be here, and you'd be doing something else instead of reading this right now. All things I'm most grateful for.
So raise a glass. Here's to my grandma and grandpa and the 70 years since they said "I do".
CHEERS.
(or, "UP THE FIELD, MAYO!" as my French grandfather would toast, referencing the soccer team from county Mayo in Ireland where my grandmothers family was from)
MJW
