I didn’t take this picture today; it must have been about three years ago. Only the backdrop has changed since they moved in with us two years ago.

I wrote this column last year for their 65th wedding anniversary, and I do not see evidence that I ever posted it here. This column might be the best thing I’ve ever done (or the least-worst, at least).

Today Mom and Dad celebrate their 66th anniversary, and this still says it best.

**

I’m telling you, Foothillians: nothing lasts anymore.

In about 30 years as a semi-functioning adult, I estimate I’ve owned four beds, seven cars, three houses, eight dogs, six sofas, four washer and dryer sets, and Lord-knows-how-many toasters. I’ve learned one lesson from all this: they don’t make anything like they used to.

Mattresses and sofas throw springs and cars throw rods. We outgrow houses, dogs throw up dead birds on my bedspread, washers upchuck suds all over the basement, and toasters lose their spring.

No: nothing lasts forever, unless you happen to count George and Patricia.

In a time where there’s a divorce in America every 36 seconds, the average marriage lasts eight years before throwing in the towel, and true commitment only comes with a straitjacket, George and Pat have managed to keep the home fires burning since 1950. In that time, they’ve had five kids, 10 grandkids, and four great-grandchildren; nine dogs, 10 houses, an actual wringer washing machine and a toaster that was apparently forged from a slab of titanium and lasted for forty years.

On the kitchen counter a spoon jar holds the same spatula dad used to flip eggs for Sunday breakfast in 1963. There’s oregano in their pantry that was purchased in 1970. Every Sunday night mom eats popcorn from the same red bowl that she used in 1960.

(Note: I tossed the oregano. There’s commitment, and then there’s food poisoning).

Their nativity scene was purchased one figurine at a time from the local Woolworth’s, 15 cents a pop. You paid extra for Baby Jesus and the manger. George and Pat were so broke when they first got married they couldn’t afford the complete set, so they bought it one piece at a time. Every Christmas that scene is arranged on furniture bought in 1965, fashioned in an age when craftsmen knew their mortises from their tenons.

All those children gave George and Pat’s marriage vows a run for what little money they had. When mom and dad promised to be true in good times and in bad and in sickness and in health, they had no idea that they would run up against long summer vacations crammed into a Volkswagen bus chugging through an Iowa cornfield, or kids who wouldn’t use a strange bathroom for a week. They had no idea that they were signing up for 35 collected years of unexplainable teenaged angst, nor did they anticipate ponying up for sixty years of Catholic schooling, with approximately 200 parent/teacher conferences with exasperated nuns.

I guarantee you that in 1950 they didn’t know that they were promising to try, with varying degrees of success, to keep calm and carry on as they lost their beloved son, too young at age 31.

But they did, and then, like so many of The Greatest Generation, they soldiered on.

Raised in an era where the mantra was “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without,” George and Patricia have eschewed our disposable society and beaten every depressing statistic about marriage into fine confetti, perfect for tossing into the sky as we celebrate their anniversary.

Sixty-five years ago this month, George and Patricia stood before God and said, “I do.”

And then, by God, they did.

What the heck is she doing now?

© E. Stocking Evans 2016