→ Write about your parents, memorable moments with them
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My mom and dad fought like the dickens throughout their 46 years together. It was a stormy relationship full of fighting, bad vibes, brief infidelity, drinking, mood disorders, and several memorable blow ups at the dinner table. You know, normal stuff. My parents never displayed romantic feelings toward each other. When they weren’t really fighting, they were play fighting- joking, insulting, making fun of each other’s ethnicity and partaking in the rolling of the eyes.
My wedding caught them off guard and pierced that routine.
Mom and I had just gone wedding dress shopping at Marshall Fields in Chicago. I was home from Japan, briefly, to check out the wedding venue, buy the dress, and choose the flowers.
We came home and my mom began humming my wedding song in the front hallway.
Give me a kiss to build a dream on and my imagination will thrive upon that kiss.
Mom transformed every time she sang. The usual depression that she suffered seemed to fly away with wings into another world. Her humming transported her somewhere. I don’t know where. Some place good.
Sweetheart, I ask no more than this. A kiss to build a dream on.
Standing on our braided rug with the chandelier from the 80’s hanging over us, she stretched out her arms and grabbed my hands. We began dancing slowly as her blue eyes lit up and her face turned a ruddy red. The Irish smile came out.
Suddenly my dad, wrapped up in a blanket in the den adjacent to the hall, leaned over the doorway and said, “What are you guys doing out there?”
Mom, in a voice I had never heard, said, “Jim! Come out here for a minute!”
He appeared quickly, obeying that lightness in her voice. I can only imagine how thrilling it was for him to hear her drop the disapproval for once.
Give me a kiss before you leave me..
She then asked him to dance with her and I stepped away. Their faces were lit up in that spontaneous moment, as if time had caught them both off guard and all of the crud from years of hurt fell away. And they danced like a couple that knows each other well, as if they had been secretly dancing all of their lives.
My heart filled up with utter joy. It was a rare moment filled with the magical promise of new lives, love found, and the hope for a beautiful future.
That was in 2000. I never saw them dance like that again. In fact tomorrow (Feb 11) is mom’s 85th birthday- the same day dad decided to depart this earth.
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