Variation On Fmom Reminiscing.

I drove Fmom out to the family cemetery a couple of days ago and listened to her reminisce. This time she told me of before she and Fdad were dating and during the dating.

First she told me about one day she was riding to town with a friend and as they passed my Grandparents house, she told her friend that one day she was going to marry the boy that lived in that house. She didn’t mention if she had met Fdad before that, but she said she was sure that she would marry him one day. So I start kidding around with her and telling her she had her claws in him from the beginning. Needless to say, she wasn’t too impressed with my kidding.

Second she told me of during their dating. They started dating when they were teenagers and Fmom said that she came up to ride horses every weekend with Fdad and friends. She said on this weekend that they had been out riding when the bridle broke and her horse started running. They were coming back to a neighbor’s field when the neighbor saw them and opened the gate to one of his pastures. Fmom said that’s the last thing she wanted because the horse would keep running. So she said Fdad was yelling for her to take her feet out of the stirrups and to jump. She said that she kept looking for some sand or soft spot where she could jump. She finally found it, jumped and went rolling. The biggest thing she remembered was that Great Aunt N (GAN) had just bought her a new winter coat and when she landed in the red dirt that’s predominate around here, her new coat was badly stained. She said GAN kept asking her what they did to get the coat stained so badly, but Fmom didn’t tell her she had to jump off a horse. She said that if she had told GAN, that she was positive she wouldn’t be allowed to come back to ride horses. The stain never came out and she never told GAN what happened.

Fmom and Fdad eventually got married and had six children, of which I’m lucky enough to be one. I’ve now been back home for four years after being gone for more than thirty years. There’s a lot of stuff that I missed being gone, and that’s one reason when Fmom starts reminiscing that I listen so intently. As a kid and young adult I always considered myself to busy to stop and listen to her or Fdad talking about their early years. That’s why I think I’m so lucky now to have come home and have time to spend with Fmom and listen to her stories. Now if I could only get her to talk into my microcassette recorder and tell the stories, it would save me a lot of time in trying to remember all the details. She won’t do it though, and I’ll just have to be satisfied with trying to remember.