Milt (Dad) and I were married in PA in my home church. The morning we had become engaged while at Nyack, Dad had taken me to "Inspiration Point" and there asked me to marry him and gave me my beautiful diamond. At the same time he proposed not only marriage but a wonderful honeymoon. We were to travel with a tour group and visit twelve or more countires of Europe, the Middle East and Egypt. So that is how we started our life together. The tour was the greatest - all first class hotels, arranged tours or free time as each person wished. We travelled through Europe and the Middle East, a wonderful expeience!
This lasted six weeks and we got back in time to settle into our tiny apartment - two small rooms, a very small kitchen and a smaller bathroom. But we did not want to live in the Nyack College married student dorms, and this was a great choice for us. Milt's dad had provided financially for his education and so we did not have to work, but enjoyed a great year at Nyack, where Dad graduated the next summer.
Dad had bought me a sewing machine and the first thing I ever made (and maybe the last!) was a maternity outfit which I wore the day Dad was one of the student speakers at the annual missions day at Carnegie Hall in New York City. I was very pregnant with our first child and we were looking forward to her birth in mid-June (we thought). We entertained a lot that year in our tiny apartment, it was a fun year. And Dad got his degree from Nyack in June.
Uncle Dave and Aunt Donna were living with some very elderly people in Pennsylvania for their High School years. When my parents went back to the field, the twins had finished their Sophomore year in Pa, living with these people. These well meaning folks - who had never had children of their own - decided that two high school children were just too much for them. So when they arrived at Nyack for Dad's graduation, they brought along the twins plus all their belongings and said they thought we were better suited to care for them than they were! So we had a ready made family after being married one year and expecting our first child.
It was a gift from God, actually, as we had felt God leading us to start a new Alliance church in Vermont, and they would be workers in that church along with us! In the meantime, I was very pregnant and we headed for Connecticut to await the birth of our baby. Aunt Donna was with us and Uncle Dave was working at a camp. While we stayed with Grandma Pierce in CT, Dad made frequent trips to spy out the land fpr a church possibility in Rutland, Vermont. He bought a house there, and then we gathered furniture from Grandma P and elsewhere and he took a truckload up to the home he had just purchased for us in Vermont, sight unseen to me!
Cheryl's birth was overdue by at least two weeks the day he left for Rutland. And in the meantime back in CT, I was busy going into labor! I did not want to tell my mother-in-law because I wanted my husband to be the one to take me to the hospital so Donna and I hung out and walked and waited. When Dad drove in about nine that evening, we could not wait to tell him we would be going to the hospital! So off we went again for a twenty minute drive to the Putnam hospital.
It was a long labor for me - all night long - and finally she was born the next morning, a beautiful baby girl, Cheryl Lynn. How we loved her and how proud we were to be parents. That was my first taste of what it means to be a mother. She weighed ten pounds, one ounce at birth, so she was easy to take care of - it was like dressing a big doll! When she was eleven days old we travelled bags and baggage to Vermont and began life in our ne home then.
Mom, there are a bunch of details in here that I've never heard! Like the fact that you BOUGHT the house in Vermont. I suppose you sold it when you left there? Also the fact that Grandpa Pierce had paid for Dad's education so you didn't have to work that year.
ReplyDeleteThis blog will serve as your memoirs!