My husband and I recently spent nine days on a bus tour with fifty other senior citizens. When we stopped for the night, each couple was assigned one motel room. Several of the pairs had different last names. I didn’t know if some of the women didn’t change their names when they wed or if they were just living together like those that told us, “We’re not married.”
This is the same generation who was stymied several years ago when their college-age child planned to bring a ‘significant other’ along when coming home for a holiday. Morals were changing. The parents, part of a generation that expected brides to be virgins, suspected the couple slept together when away from home but wrote “Dear Abby” to ask, “Do we assign them one or two bedrooms?”
When we’re young, it’s easy to say, “I’d never do that,” or “I’ll always do this.” As we age, we find times change and so do people. The man who proposed to me in September 1958 wore a suit and drove his Lincoln to collet money from people who were behind in repaying small loans from a finance company. By the time we married the following April, he was wearing coveralls and driving a tractor as the hired man on his brother-in-law’s farm. Seven years later, he got down off the tractor. He put on a uniform, badge and gun belt to climb into a Winnebago County squad car and begin a 37-year career in law enforcement.
I played a newspaper woman in our high school junior class play. At that time, females were slotted to the society pages writing about women’s clubs, engagements and weddings. Only men covered the hard news. I had no idea that fifteen years later I would become a freelance journalist chasing firetrucks, reporting on civic meetings and writing feature articles about people in our community doing interesting things.
Ken and I raised three children and enjoyed watching two grandchildren grow from babies to adults. Each generation does things differently. We try to ‘go with the flow’ although we may not always agree.
What changes have you made in your thinking through the years?
My life has been full of change. First this farm girl who attended a one room country school for eight years, went off to high school at Orfordville. Though small for a H.S., it was new and big for me. After HS, I made the big leap to the University of Wisconsin. Then five days after I graduated from college, I got married and began sleeping with a man for the first time. (There’s a new experience for you!!) When he graduated one year later, I began the nomadic life of an Army Officer’s wife for 17 years.
When that ended in 1975, I came back to Madison to begin graduate school, and the life of a single mother. From there, it was the wife of a University professor’s wife; a VA employees wife (with a lot of travel); and now the wife of a wonderful older gentleman. I have finally lived in the same place since 1993!! Hurray. I believe I have adjusted pretty well to all the changes in my life.