This Little Life Of Mine - Chapter 28 The Fight Is On Thomas M Parsons

28. The Fight Is On

An old joke says that the hymn The Fight Is On is the hymn that should be sung at nearly all weddings, because once the “I do’s” are said, the couple goes on their way to fight to the bitter end.

That may be true in some cases, but it was not in ours, praise the Lord. We had our moments. We had our differences. We had times we did not clearly agree on things. Occasionally we had words. But the fights we had were far more often with things or people outside ourselves.

Like that trip back to Grand Rapids from Chicago on our honeymoon. That was a real struggle as I labored to keep the car on the road with several inches of snow everywhere around us. The lives of my new bride and myself were clearly in jeopardy if I made one wrong move. I prayed all the way back to Grand Rapids. The Lord answered my prayers.

When we arrived at our little apartment on campus, we had a couple of immediate tasks ahead of us. First, we had to find Linda a job. We had decided that there was no way we could make it financially on just my income from the bank. I had one more semester of seminary to go and then I could work full-time while Linda finished her college education. With Linda’s experience working for an insurance company in Indianapolis, she landed a job at an insurance company which had offices in my bank building. This was great. I could drive her to work in the morning, head for classes, come to work in the afternoon and then we could come home together at night. With her pay and my pay we figured we could make it.

The other thing we had to face immediately was the need for me to finish my doctrinal statement which was required for graduation. It had to be written, submitted, criticized, rewritten and then defended orally before I could graduate from seminary. It was due when we returned to classes less than a week after our return to Grand Rapids.

I studied and wrote. Linda typed. I studied and wrote some more. Linda typed some more. When our marriage was just one week old, my doctrinal statement was completed and ready to hand in on time.

Now, that certainly is a different honeymoon than we had planned for our summer wedding. The plan then was to go to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and spend a week at Tahquamenon Falls and Munising and Porcupine Mountains. But those were not places one went for a honeymoon in December. In December one wrote his doctrinal statement while his new bride typed it.

But I couldn’t complain. The most beautiful girl in the world was my wife. We lived together. We did everything together. Everything. That made even writing a doctrinal statement a wonderful experience. Well, maybe not. It was hard work.

Linda’s new job started the day I returned to classes. It did not take us long to get into a routine of work and school, eating and sleeping, living as man and wife. And it wasn’t always as romantic as we had pictured it when we were writing those letters to one another just a few short months previously.

I took to married life immediately and fully. I had never been so happy in my life before. I had waited so long to have a wife to share life with that married life was so immediately satisfying to me. I loved coming home to Linda, I loved sharing an evening in our apartment with her, I loved sharing a bed with her, I loved waking up next to her each morning. I loved her and the life we had together.

Our first bed was a rollaway I had purchased when I came to seminary three years earlier. I had already slept in it for that time. Because of our financial situation, that bed had to serve us for several months. Fine. Except it was a single bed. Well, newlyweds like to sleep close to each other anyway.

As easily as I took to married life, it was harder for Linda. After all, she was six and a half years younger than I. She turned twenty-one only one month after we were married. She had not waited as long as I had for marriage. Every once in a while, usually at night in the dark in our bedroom I would hear the soft sound that indicated tears had come to her eyes. In those moments I would ask, “What’s wrong?” I expected her to comment on the uncomfortable bed of which I took more than my share. But that usually was not the problem.

This did not happen often. Most days and nights were pleasant and we enjoyed each other’s company. But every so often the tears would come.

I would try holding her. That seemed to help some. I would try talking to her. That seemed to help very little. In fact it sometimes seemed to make it worse. In my dense, male mind I felt I had failed my wife, but I for the life of me could not figure out how, or what I could do about it.

The simple truth was, Linda missed her family. Twenty years of living with Dad, Mom and Sister were suddenly replaced with living with Husband. It took some time for her to adjust to this major change.

During that first year of our marriage, 1969, we had some wonderful times, however. We made two trips. First was the honeymoon trip we had planned for our June 7 wedding date but did not take because our actual wedding date became December 28. Around Memorial Day, 1969, we went to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in our car, Hazel.

My boss at the bank came from a rich and prominent Grand Rapids family. Bill’s dad had owned extensive parcels of land along Plainfield Avenue, land which he sold in the forties and fifties for development. This produced a great deal of wealth for the family. One of the things that wealth had purchased was a summer home near Petoskey, Michigan. When I told Bill that Linda and I were planning a trip north, he offered the use of the house for the weekend. I took the offer.

So we wound up spending an extended weekend in the summer house less than an hour’s drive from the Mackinaw Bridge and the Upper Peninsula. But before I tell you about that trip, I need to back up a bit.

Living in the school apartment that I had lived in before our marriage, we were not supposed to have pets. But Linda wanted a pet. She loved animals. She had dogs, cats, horses, and even a pet alligator in her growing up years.

It would not be possible to have a dog at the apartment, and certainly not a pet alligator. But perhaps we could have a kitten. Who would know? Kittens didn’t have to be taken out for a walk. Kittens didn’t bark. Kittens didn’t leave “treasures in the snow” during the winter months. And maybe a kitten would help Linda to adjust more readily to the new life we shared.

The Grand Rapids animal shelter received twenty-five cents of our hard-earned money and we received a little orange kitten that Linda name Nicholas, or Nikki for short. Nikki came to join us in our apartment where pets were not supposed to live.

Nikki had to be alone much of the day since we were busy at work and at school, but he seemed to get along well. After all, what do cats do most of the time but sleep!

One day, the man from the school office who oversaw the operation of the apartments came calling at our door. Not knowing who was knocking, I opened the door, and out ran Nikki between the man’s legs. I thought he would say something. But he didn’t. He had some paper for us to sign, but he didn’t mention the cat. After he left we scooped Nikki up and returned him to our apartment.

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Nikki accompanied us on our trip to the U. P. Most of the time he slept in the back seat of Hazel, curled up on a blanket we had brought for him. Even in late May, the U. P. was chilly; there were even patches of snow on the ground, especially in shady areas. But the cool temperatures meant we could leave Nikki in the car while we toured Tahquamenon Falls or other areas.

Nikki was a clown as a kitten, a quality he lost somewhat when he grew up. We had brought a box for him to sleep in at night at my boss’ family cottage. The bedroom Linda and I shared was at the top of a long flight of stairs. The cottage had no carpeting, just beautiful hardwood floors. Sometimes slick hardwood floors.

One morning as Nikki came bounding out of the bedroom to come downstairs, his leverage, angle of approach and velocity were not quite what they needed to be. He bumped and slid down each of the stairs one-by-one and came to a crashing halt at the bottom. Unhurt, he got up and walked away, somewhat embarrassed, at least it seemed to us.

Nikki did provide much amusement for us. We enjoyed watching his antics. The school had a pond that lay about halfway between the campus and the apartments. A dirt path connected the two areas, a path Linda and I walked many times. One quiet Sunday afternoon, we went for a walk along the path with Nikki. He stayed on the path for the most part, but enjoyed smelling the different odors that met his nose as he strolled along. Then we came to the place where the path was adjacent to the pond.

It was spring, and the pond had a growth of algae providing a green undulating surface for the water. Nikki approached cautiously, sniffing the surface which appeared solid enough to him. We did not try to stop him as he gingerly stuck out one paw, pulled it back, then tried again. Finally he stepped onto the green surface and, of course, fell into the water, much to his dismay and his owners’ delight. The water was only a few inches deep, but he decided he did not care for the experience. And then we had to take him home and clean him up.

When we took the other trip we made that summer, Nikki had to stay with Linda’s parents in Indianapolis. We made the trip we could not make the summer before. With our friends Tim and Connie, we went to Tim’s family home in West Virginia.

What a beautiful state Tim had there. Mountains. Valleys. Rivers. Forests. Winding roads. I remember what a challenge it was for a flatlander like myself who had never driven outside of the flatness of Michigan, Indiana and Illinois to negotiate the hairpin turns and ups and downs of the average West Virginia highway. I am certain I made some native drivers upset with me for my cautious driving.

Once we got to Tim’s family home, I let Tim do the driving. He took us over the mountain and through the woods into some very beautiful places. We stayed at the Blackwater Falls Inn. If we had made the trip a year earlier, we would have had to get two rooms, one for Tim and me and one for Connie and Linda. But now, since we were both married couples, we could stay in a two-room suite, which we did. One of my favorite pictures I ever took of Linda I took the morning after our stay there. Dressed in white shorts and a beige and white top, she is looking over the side of the balcony, a veritable vision of loveliness, if you will pardon the cliche.

That day we hiked to the falls on the Blackwater River and watched the water swirl and drop and foam and make roaring sounds mixed with the gentler sounds of dripping and bubbling water.

Tim took us to Germany Valley where we could see down from a hill into the valley that spread below us. One hundred years earlier, armies marched in Germany Valley as north and south were engaged in a terrible Civil War. But as we stood and looked into the valley, all was peaceful. Gentle slopes of land sported grass and trees. Here and there a building shone in the morning sun. Crop rows spread neatly and straightly through the dark earth. Cows grazed in fields far below us.

Another trip took us to the nine hundred foot high Seneca Rock at Mouth of Seneca, West Virginia. The eroded rock formation silhouetted against the bright sky resembles a ruined old world cathedral. Tim told us about the story of Snow Bird, the beautiful daughter of the Seneca chief Bald Eagle.

Snow Bird grew up near the rock formation, and learned to climb it as a young girl. She could swiftly and deftly scale its height and stand at the top to look down on the valley below.

As a young woman who needed a brave man to become her husband, she and her father issued a challenge. The first young man who could climb to the top of the rock and meet her there could marry her. Many tried. All but one failed. The first man to climb the rock spent the rest of his life with Snow Bird by his side.

The Sinks of Gandy was another beautiful place Tim took us to. There really is nothing there, at least in terms of man-made things. No gas station. No restaurant. No motel. No quaint little store selling replicas of this or that. There wasn’t even a road, just tire marks in the dirt. But I can still see the beauty of the place.

Rising high on every side were the mountains, green and misty. A little dirt path pocked with tire marks gently curved its way through the gap between the mountains. And nearby, although we could not see it, the Gandy River sank into a cave and ran underground for some distance.

On our last day, Tim took us to the top of Spruce Knob, the highest point in West Virginia at 4,860 feet. The wind blew around our heads as we walked on the large blocks of stone that are scattered across the summit. Twenty miles away is the furthest visible mountain range. There is an observation tower at the summit now, but it was still in the planning stages when we were there.

Our week with Tim and Connie flew by quickly and soon we were back in Michigan. It was July, 1969, and I can still remember the trip as if it were yesterday. With my young and beautiful wife by my side, I knew we would take many trips in our lifetime together and see many beautiful things.

And so we have. And the only fights our travels have created have been those we have fought to find time and money to travel together. Oh, and when I get lost and refuse to stop and ask for directions.

Pictures on this page. Left column: [1] Tom and Linda with Hazel, their 1967 Plymouth Valiant. Photo taken in the spring of 1968. [2] Nicholas, or Nikki, the kitten, taken early in 1969. Right column: [1] Blackwater Falls in Blackwater Falls State Park near Davis, West Virginia. Photo taken in summer of 1969. [2] View from Spruce Knob in West Virginia. Photo taken in the summer of 1969.

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