Introducing myself

For the two or three people reading this who have not met me, I can think of no better way to introduce myself than to wish my parents a happy 41^st wedding anniversary. My parents met at 19 and 20 and, as they describe, hardly knew anything but to hang on to each other. So they married less than a year after meeting.  (I followed a similar pattern and just celebrated my 13^th wedding anniversary.) Seeing their relationship over the years has been a blessing, and the older I get the more I appreciate the fierce love they have for each other.

            Our marriages are a model to our children of how to relate to others, and our interactions with them teach them how we think they deserve to be treated.  So, the way a father treats his daughter teaches her how she is supposed to be treated by boys and men. A parent in a parenting class we are taking said, “each interaction with someone instructs them on how we are to be treated.” Married or otherwise, let us take seriously the necessity of being kind above all else.  We are role models, for better or for worse. Let’s raise a generation of children eager to find a spouse who treats them the way their parents did.   

*Postscript: I promise I will not post poems often but that is how I can best describe my parents. Enjoy!

Revisiting U.T. after Forty Years

He says that everyone’s clothing is so

ordinary. No funky clothes, long hair

no flared pants: polyester apropos

of so much uncertainty. The bright glare

of change. And here is where he marched and here

is where a sniper shot. The tower’s closed.

See, even then he didn’t fit this sphere-

a Christian hippy. Female friends supposed

his wedding ring didn’t matter. See,

he had a prof, so kind and smart and yet

an atheist.  And so he tried to be

like him but couldn’t dismiss how he met

his wife and how God said that she’s the one

and forty years after her love still stuns

© 2012, Best Austin Poetry. Reprinted with permission