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| Joe Hart, best man, Lucyann Eyre, Maid of Honor, Me and Pat at the home on Cressman Road where we held our reception. |
As some of you have recognized from my last few writings I have been on a melancholy journey lately. It is because for many in this stage of life this would be a journey of celebration…fifty years of anything would be worth celebrating, but I’ll miss the joy of celebrating those 50 years with my best friend. This would have been the year.
It all happened so fast. Our first date in June. Engaged in August. Met the new in-laws in September. Moved to Pennsylvania in October. Married in November. So this time of year is finding me looking back and remembering the good times and feeling amazed at how fast the time has passed.
Today I took a road trip to all the places I have lived since moving to Pennsylvania in 1966. My first stop was on Cressman Road in Harleysville. We left Illinois, pulling a U-haul trailer behind my 1966 VW (yes I said pull a fully loaded trailer behind the VW). We could not travel faster than 40 MPH and that was downhill. Driving from Ingleside to Harleysville at that speed made for a long slow trip. Being a new convert to my faith, when Pat asked if we could stop at a hotel about half way there, I asked if he could promise to be “good”. “I can’t promise that,” he said. “Keep on driving then,” I said, and we did, 23 total hours from Ingleside to Harleysville. When we pulled into the driveway, Pat got out, walked through the door with me following close behind, and he turned to his Mom and said, “Take care of Marlene Mom, I am tired and going to bed.” There I was standing in the doorway, with my new family that I had just met 3 weeks earlier.
I shared Lucyann’s bedroom until our marriage on Thanksgiving Day. We were perfect roommates. We both were good at hiding our dirty laundry under our bed. It was also the place where I began to learn about unconditional love and it’s true meaning. I was a young woman with not a lot of female guidance from my own mother, so I entered this family like a waif from the wrong side of the tracks. I learned this when my husband’s grandmother who lived with my widowed mother-in-law, did my laundry and discovered my less than perfect lingerie. Shocked that I would become a bride with such garments, she grabbed everything out of my drawers and threw it all away. By the time she thought of what she had done the trash man had come and emptied the trash cans.
When I returned from work, I was met at the door by a nervous grandmother who guided me to her room and explained what she had done while slipping some money into my hands telling me I needed to go out that night and replace what had been discarded for all I had left was what I was wearing.
I slipped up to my bedroom and burying my face into the pillow crying with embarrassment, wanting to run away but couldn’t because I had nowhere to go. This turned out to be a good thing in the end. When Pat came in from his job, he was told what had happened and finding me crying up in my room, explained for the first of many times to me that when someone does something out of love, I could not get mad. “If she did not love you,” he said, “she would not have cared.”
Our first apartment was at Pennbrooke Apartments in Lansdale. I remembered when we got the apartment Nov 1st. We had less than three weeks to gather the things we needed to set up our first home. Garage sales and auctions allowed for some good finds. An old bed from the house, a table from Uncles Bob and Ed set us up for a good start. We didn’t have much, but we didn’t need much. We had each other and it was fun. I remember one night we had gone over to the apartment to set up the kitchen. After awhile, the apartment manager came knocking on the door with a message from Pat’s mother. She thought we were there just a little bit too long and thought it time we return to the house. This made for a good story on more than one occasion during our lifetime.
A year later we found a cheap, $55 a month apartment on Morwood Road in Telford. A downstairs, one bedroom apartment in the country. We could have a dog. It was a small place, yet we had Damian while there and became pregnant with our second son, Justin. Pat and I actually argued about moving. Pat wanted to stay…after all who wanted to give up $55 a month?
Our third home was on Trumbauersville Road in Quakertown. A 3 bedroom rental house allowed us to grow our family that at this time included Joliene. It was here that we took in our first house guests. Fresh Air Children from the city for two weeks. This turned out to cause trouble with our landlord. They were black. He did not like that. Although we enjoyed having Keven and Michael in our family for two weeks, when the next summer came we were asked by the landlord to not bring the kids out again. He felt that he was being blamed for having the first blacks in the area and he said if we respected him we would not do it. It was an awful time for us, for we loved the family we grew to know and wanted them to return to our house. So we left there and bought our first home on Portzer Road in Quakertown and our first guests were the whole Edwards family.
We lived on Portzer Road for 13 years. Our family grew by one more, Aaron. Family picnics, holiday parties, yard sales, and great neighbors made this a hard place to move from. But when your oldest son could not stand up straight in their bedroom on the second floor (we lived in a cape cod style home with a slanted room upstairs) it was time to move.
We soon found ourselves on East Market Street in Perkasie. Pat and I knew from the moment we crossed the threshold of this house that this was home. It took awhile for the kids to adjust to the new school and neighborhood, but the family time at this place was perfect in many ways. We always seem to find room for those needing a bed and place to stay until they got back up on their feet. In fact, one time we found the kids had put a sign up on our bedroom door, “Boarding House Managers Sleep Here.”
In the 18 years we lived there we had the following people live with us at one time or another: Oko (a Japanese exchange student), Little Rich, Big Rich, Penny, Brandon, Tyler, my Dad, my mother-in-law, Denise, and Dawn (a woman of many personalities). The first summer we moved into the house, Damian’s friend Carl, lived with us all summer causing us to explain to the neighbors that all the kids did not belong to us. It was a sad moment when I recognized due to Pat’s illness that we could no longer stay in this home of many memories, and we moved to where I am now, a 55 plus community in Buckingham.
This last move was a bittersweet move. It was good to downsize. Taking care of a large home and yard by myself was beginning to weigh on me. Moving here was a form of relief even when it did also mean that Pat was ill and could no longer do steps. I knew when I moved in here that this would not be my last home but it has been a great place to be, especially with the outreach during Pat’s illness and eventual death.
But it is time for me to move on. I can look back at each one of the homes I have lived and remember the good moments and happy memories. For this I am grateful. But, as I once said to one of my sons, "I am not dead yet." I do have a life to live and I am working to make the best of it. Even when my thoughts fill me with what once was, I know that I am grateful for all that it has been.
My life with Pat was more than I ever imagined it could be. And because of our life, I know that if I remain open to all possibilities, it could happen again. I just have to get in touch with that spirit within me that directed me to take a chance all those years ago and not be afraid.
