Remembering ...

“As I lie alone waiting for this morning before Christmas to dawn, I’m conscious of the love that has existed between two people for near on to sixty years. My thoughts turn to our first meeting when I had the premonition that I would someday marry you. Then again in the old Star Pavilion and later on that wonderful spring floor of the Anona, how we waltzed and two-stepped at the Christmas dances, then afterward would go into the Andelin Café for an ice cream soda before you walked me home in the crisp Christmas night with the snow crunching under our tired feet.

“I’m thinking too of the Sunday evenings as you drove Nellie on the little buggy up to Joseph to spend the evening with me, of the pride I felt each time you came because you were just a bit nicer than some other fellows I knew.

“I’m thinking of how our companionship turned into love and we began to plan for a life together, how you brought that sweet little ring with an opal, my birthstone, which cost you several loads of wood hauled from the mountains on those dangerous roads. It was so beautiful on my finger and appeared so expensive, no diamond could have ever shown brighter.

“I think again of your two years away at school when I would go each Saturday to the post office for your letter, short but sweet. I think you always told me you loved me and enclosed a line of kisses.”

Mary Olive Ross Ogden, December 1962