Genealogy Blog Party: Stories of Love

Remember the old love stories, where kids grow up together and later fall in love, marry, have kids, and live happily ever after?

Rarely does it work like that in real life, and never with anything approaching perfection.  Life is a rocky road at times, and so is love.

However, let me tell you a story:

When I had just turned seven years old, my father died, and my mother wanted to take the three of us kids -- my sister, the oldest (16 at the time), my brother (12), and me -- from our home in California to Florida, where her mom and sister lived.  In Florida, my aunt (mom's sister) took upon herself the duties she had assumed six years earlier, when she was my godmother at my baptism.  She took me to her church, of the Episcopal persuasion, and there I met a group of other kids, including a boy with the unusual name of Keys.  We kids grew up in that church, all of us participating either in the choir or as acolytes (altar boys), and when we became teenagers, we all joined the Episcopal Young Churchmen. 

That was a fine time, and I found opportunities to serve as treasurer of the EYC and as one of two delegates to the diocese-wide House of Episcopal Young Churchmen, or HEYC.  I got my driver's license at 16, my aunt having also taken up the duties of teaching me to drive, as she had my sister and my brother.  She was a calmer teacher than mom ever could have been!  Keys needed transportation home after meetings, so I gave him rides.  I lived quite near to the church, just three blocks away.  Keys lived much farther than that, but I enjoyed driving and was happy to take him home.  We developed a habit of sitting in the car in the driveway and talking, about all sorts of things.  We, know-it-all teenagers that we were, solved the world's problems there.  We talked about amusing or engaging movies and TV we had seen.  We told jokes.  And I commiserated with Keys when he told of his difficulties with his girlfriend.  I wasn't much into dating as a teenager, though I enjoyed social gatherings and talking with all sorts of people.  So did Keys.  We were good buddies.

We  went to different high schools, rival schools.  When we graduated, we went to different, rival colleges.  One Christmas break, I decided to go to the Christmas Eve service at the church, and Keys was there with his family.  I saw him on the other side of the church, with new eyes.  I fell in love.  I didn't know whether he reciprocated, but he began to call me on the phone, and we'd go out for ice cream or to a movie. 

It wasn't all smooth sailing.  I had entered upon an internship at the city's public library, which led to a full grant for graduate school in library science, and a guarantee of a job at the city's main library after graduation.  It was during the internship that Keys decided to break up with me.  It broke my heart, but my steadfast mentor, my aunt, who was unmarried, told me that if he cared for me, he would be back.  She was right.

We dated again, and after graduating from college, he was concerned about the draft.  It was the 1960s, and he did not particularly want to go to Vietnam, but he didn't want to go to Canada, either.  He was looking for a way to serve.  He joined the United States Coast Guard, and went to officer candidate school at Yorktown, Virginia.  After he completed that training, he was assigned aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Ingham -- which is now a museum on the National Register of Historic Places, moored at Key West, Florida. 

It was then that we got married.  We did not start off living as husband and wife, though, because I was under two years' contract to the city library, having received my master's degree and started work there, and his ship spent 30 days at a time bobbing like a cork in the North Atlantic ocean, hosting scientists conducting atmospheric and oceanographic experiments, and providing guidance to ships crossing the ocean on the northerly routes.

We did manage to have a baby, and then he got a change of station to a city about 400 miles away from our home city, and we finally were together as a family.  It's been nearly 47 years -- we are 18 days away from our 47th anniversary -- and there have been hard times, but there have been more good times and a lot of laughter.  We have grown old together, and are happy and content to be as we are.  It's not perfect, but it sure beats anything else I could imagine.

So sometimes such stories do come true.

Vanilla Milk

I'm getting ready to go to live for two years in Pinellas Park while I work on my master's degree at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.  I've been loading my car with boxes of books, so I'm taking a break and having a small dinner of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and vanilla milk.

Vanilla milk is a treat taught to me by my brother, Arden "Ned" Packard II (1942-1996) when I was something like 7 or 8 years old.  The recipe is simple.  In a glass, put one or two teaspoons of sugar and about 1/2 teaspoon vanilla (vary measurements to personal taste).  Add milk to fill the glass.  Stir.  It's yummy, and one of my favorite treats.  I do not indulge it very often, but when I do, I think of my brother.

My brother taught me lots of useful stuff.  He was five years older than I am.  When I was five years old, he taught me how to clean a fish, something our father had taught him.  We lived on Perdido Bay in Pensacola in what seemed to me at the time to be a large house, but then, everything looks big when you're five years old.

Ned died in 1996, of acute myelocytic leukemia.  The last thing he taught me was how to face death with dignity and courage.  That is the most important lesson of all.

And by now, I'm sure he has taught the cherubim and seraphim how to make vanilla milk.
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