Of Bears and Penguins

On a sunny Saturday, two young women – freshmen at the University of Missouri – sat at a kitchen table in a house in Barnhart, Missouri drinking coffee.

Glad to be away from classes for the weekend, the ladies relaxed in their pajamas in front of the kitchen window.

“Oh, do you see that little box of house down there,” said Jana, the one who had invited her roommate to come home with her. “The one just down there at the bottom of the hill?”

The white house at the bottom of the hill was beyond tiny. Just four walls enclosing four rooms. It had a gracious front porch that looked out to a garden that seemed almost bigger than the house itself.

Jana knew the family that lived there – the father had passed away the year before, when Jana and one of the boys had been seniors at Crystal City High. There were eight kids in all, and only two were still under the family roof. The mother was a tough old bird who worked long hours at Steak ‘n’ Shake to take care of her boy in college and her son still at home.

“Yes, I see it,” said her friend. She was from Raytown, the eldest of five children and the first in her family to attend college. The daughter of a TWA pilot and an Illinois farm girl, she was studying to be an elementary school teacher, but spent lots of time playing bridge and drinking coffee in the Union.

“Well those people can cram more people into that house for barbecues and get-togethers than you could ever imagine,” said Jana. “They practically pour out of the house and on to the porch and into the lawn.”

“But the house is so small – how could they possibly fit two people, much less ten or fifteen?” said her roommate.

“Oh, more than that. I say you wouldn’t believe it if you saw it – their family is large,” said Jana.

With that, they finished their coffee, and at the end of the weekend returned to their life in Columbia.

I suppose Jana’s roommate didn’t think much more of that weekend until she found herself, three years later as a senior in college, in the small house next to the man she loved.

She must have laughed remembering her first encounter with her husband’s family from Jana’s kitchen window.

Actually she’s still laughing about it. Both of my parents are still laughing about it.

37 years ago, today, Jim, who grew up in that box of a house, and Lynn, who was Jana’s roommate in Johnston Hall, got married in an evening ceremony at a Methodist Church in Kansas City, Missouri.

She carried a bouquet of daisies and yellow roses and her husband wore a daisy in the button hole of his jacket. And in every picture the joy on their faces seems to challenge the world to find something to bring them down. Hasn’t happened yet.

Here’s to them: 37 years and they love each other something fierce. They have a gift of laughter. They have a tremendous sense of adventure and curiosity. And they have given their children a vast appreciation of life and love and all that those two things entail.

Congratulations folks. And thanks.