The Gift Of Love

So just when we were all having fun and laughing, just relaxing this morning when present opening was coming to an end, my dad said he had one last present for my mom. Now, you'd really have to spend a few hours with my dad to understand his sense of humor and odd way about him, but I'll do my best to explain it.

You know how there are those kinds of people that like to wrap a present inside a box inside a box inside a box inside ANOTHER box? My dad is kinda like that. He wrote out "instructions" that my mom had to follow, things like, "To open this present you must first stand up, grab your tongue, and while holding your tongue say 'biddie biddie bidde'," stuff like that. So he goes through this whole set of instructions right?

Finally she gets to open this present which ends up being a beautiful photo album with pictures that he had professionally taken off their original wedding slides (yes, they're old enough to have used slides) all put into 4x5 slots in the album with their wedding picture on the front. He also had a dvd slideshow made of the photos that played through while their wedding song was played in the background.

My father is 67 and my mom is 58 and they've been married for 30 years. How awesome is that?

Divorce has NEVER once come up, they fight but it's mainly cute old people fighting, and they just seem to be as happy now as they ever have been.

Because they adopted us when they were older than most adoptive families, I never met or remember meeting my grandfathers. My mom's mom is still alive and I see her as much as possible but she's in pretty rough shape. Dad's mom passed away a few years ago. I don't really even remember seeing any pictures of either grandpa except for the small ones my mom has in frames here at our house.

But I looked through the album and saw pictures of my cousins as children (cousins who are now in their 40s) and I finally came to one of a face I knew all too well, a younger face of my Grandma B, dad's mom, my mom in her wedding dress, and there stood Grandpa next to them. It brought a tear to my eye because I always hear stories of grandpa's and their grandkids and how they teach them the ways of the old world and tell them stories on their laps, and I never got that. I never even met him. As a baby, I was able to meet Grandpa S though, but I was only months old and have no recollection of him whatsoever. Kinda sad:(

Alas, the photo album let me look into a side of my family history that I never knew. My parents would every now and then describe their wedding to me when I saw their wedding photo and asked about it, but it was always so hard to imagine. I was able to see my parents on one of the happiest days of their lives together and I was able to see my grandparents, all together.

The Gift Of Love sure is a rare thing these days and when we find it, we need to hold on to it. Maybe in 30 years I'll give my husband a wonderful gift like that or vice versa. It's amazing to think that in 30 years, cell phones will probably be considered a thing of the past and who knows what new technology we will see. But one thing's for sure...the human capacity for LOVE will always be here until the end of the earth and as long as humans inhabit it.