Ohio Gothic

You just never know.

When Cliff and I got married, we were school teachers in Tulsa.  However, we’d both planned on other careers: technical theater for me and pre-law for Cliff. If we’d stayed on those tracks, chances are we’d never have met.

But we did. It was a blind date I agreed to so everyone would stop telling me what a nice guy he was. After one night, I knew I’d get the goods on their high opinions of him. I don’t know what they told him about me.

We’ve been married for 38 years.

That August day in the Taos Court House, I figured we’d have a run of 3 good years. If we were lucky. (Shows you what I know.) We ended up being many things other than teachers. And we lived many places other than Tulsa.

At points, one of us was unemployed while the other one worked full-time. At times we both worked for minimum wage, had no insurance, and pinched pennies to keep the mortgage paid. We were clueless about our future, while we sat on stacked newspapers in the dreary “employee lounge” and ate peanut butter sandwiches when we worked together at a bookstore. We were lost souls out of a Dickens’ novel. Mr. and Mrs. Flopkins.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t say we gave up on each other a few times. We made each other crazy. Cliff kept explaining that what I wanted and what I needed were not the same things. I kept explaining that white paint was not just white; there was toothpaste white and vanilla white. I’ll spare you the wallpaper years. But at the end of the day, no one makes me laugh like he does. And to this day, he is undone by my arguments that knock the lights out of his contentions.

There’s no explaining love.

We’ve lived in big cities, traveled to the far side of the world, and ended up in a place with one stoplight.

We each have 2 college degrees and, for inexplicable reasons, have taken up small-scale farming in our narrow garden running the length of our house. His plants are taller than he is. I’ve frozen who-knows-how-many gallons of tomato soup, not to mention bags of yellow squash. One day I went crazy at the market and bought 5 pounds of Michigan pitted tart cherries. For the first time in 15 years, I made a batch of strawberry jam and called it quits until Maggie put a spoonful in her mouth, closed her eyes, and murmured, “Tastes like my childhood.”

I sent Cliff back for more berries.

We used to visit The Art Institute of Chicago when we lived nearby. I stood before Grant Wood’s American Gothic, studying the old couple standing side-by-side, silent and steadfast. Against all odds.

I had no idea that’s who we’d become.

You just never know.

Addendum: After Maggie took this picture, she leaned into Cliff and whispered, “Do you ever feel like you’re just another character in her play?” He answered, “All the time.” I heard that.