I have been thinking a lot about how I would compose this note for some time now, for at one time I had no idea we would arrive at this point in time but here we are. 50 years married to each other, who would have thought? I think I may tell a little about our time together, how we met etc..
I first met Jan in Ormsby on a blind date lined up by some friends of mine that knew Jan from Jackson votech school. We had a get together at Bill Peterson's home in St. James that evening and I took Jan home to the family farm near Alpha. She was impressed by my 69 Mustang Mach 1 and my collection of 8 track tapes, going from Henry Mancini to Johnny Cash. We talked a lot, which is unusual for me, listened to a lot of music and rolled unto her farm about 4 am. From that beginning we dated through the Summer and Fall and I gave her a ring on Christmas Eve before church in Ormsby in 1970, to the decision to marry on Valentine's Day the next year. To us it was why wait, we love each other and want to spend as much time together as possible, so the date was set. February in Minnesota the weather can be iffy and the night before the big day, Saturday, was not nice and we had had a lot of snow to boot. Sunday dawned clear and warmer which we took as a good omen which has turned out to be prophetic. We were married at Trinity Lutheran church in Alpha Minnesota on February 14th 1971 in an afternoon service, to a reception in the basement, to a party at the farm, to the Holiday Inn in North Mankato. The next day it was to our apartment In Waconia and then to Duluth for a night in February no less. There is a lot of filler after that with a couple long bike trips with brothers and friends and weekends back home at the farm or Ormsby until we get to the start of our second chapter, our family.
From Jan throwing up in her popcorn at the drive in in Navarre, to Waconia Ridgeview later that night, to seeing Rachel for the first time shortly there after. Life really does change forever when you have children if you are paying attention. After Rachel was born in Waconia we moved to Saint James for a job transfer for me.
The three of us did do some traveling, camping at Nemo and visiting The Grand Tetons and Yellowstone when Rachel was a year or two old. Jan, in addition to her homemaker tasks worked a couple other jobs to stay busy. In 1978 we, pretty much she, produced Genevieve to add to our clutch of children, followed in 1980 by Eli completing that part of the saga. In addition to taking care of three children and an older individual, me, she started working at Watonwan county Human Services and working toward a degree from Mankato State part time. She graduated with honors in 2008. Jan is the family record keeper and shoulder to cry on, my confidant and lover, anchor in the storms of our lives and home decorator too. You have no idea how hard it is to try and condense 50 years together into a bunch of words on a page when the most important words are stuck in my heart and I find difficult to express with my limited vocabulary. I just want the world to know that I have been blessed with a life with a woman that I never expected would ever happen to me, blessed with seven terrific grandchildren and two sons and a daughter in law that are like our own. She has put up with a husband that likes to travel, has medical problems and is forgetful of important things but not trivia. This note is more or less random thoughts that I keep coming up with as you may have noticed. We did get to Japan twice and Germany once visiting Rachel and family with her Navy husband Hans, with many trips to the Black Hills and Colorado too. I got to thinking yesterday as we were returning from getting my covid shot, how we hold hands quite a lot while I'm driving so I get to explore her hand by feel. Silly things like that. Advice like, try not to go to bed mad at each other, watch what you say because it can't be unsaid. Today, the 14th it was -16 when I got up a little cooler than in 1971 when it was 60 degrees warmer. I think that said that this is the coldest Valentines day in history. So much for global warming. I started out trying to put down a history of our time together but there was so much packed into that 50 years that I couldn't do it justice. You just had to live it, the ups and downs, but mostly ups. Our answer is to love each other and be comfortable with one another. You only get one chance at this life so you should do your best to make your partner your main object in this time on God's green Earth. Hopefully I'll get to do this in 10 years but you never know.
