My life in Wisconsin, more or less, page 2
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I fell in love with your mother, and she with me, during my second year at what was then Central Wesleyan College. She came as a student that year.
After we married, we went back to visit my parents, and what brothers and other relatives might be there, at least every other Christmas--I think oftener--and every summer.
The first trip back was traumatic for your mother. She didn't eat a single thing that she had ever eaten in her life before, it was cold--David, at least, tried to emphasize that aspect of Wisconsin winters--and there were bats, or rats, or something, in the ceiling where we stayed. She got out and kissed the ground when we got back to South Carolina.
On our Christmas trip, 1970, on the way back, Stacy, who was less than five months old, leaned over and planted a big slobbery kiss on me. She seemed to know full well what she was doing.
In the summer of 1971, the National Science Foundation paid for me to spend several weeks at the University of Houston. It was there that Stacy learned to walk, and to say several words, such as "ear" and "eye." We went to Monterrey, Mexico for a weekend. It was at this institute on population biology that I had my first real experience with computers.
This is your sister, at Mom and Dad's, we think in 1978. That's Updike's roof on the right.
In the summer of 1979, the National Endowment for the Arts paid for me to spend several weeks at Indiana University, in my first introduction to bioethics. It was there that we made "All Things Considered." I heard, on ATC, that if you bit into life savers, you could see sparks, provided, of course, that it was dark. So the three of us went into a closet in our University apartment and tried it. It worked. Unfortunately, the closet door wouldn't open. I had a jackknife, and cut a hole through the door, and Stacy reached through it and opened the door from the outside. Your mother, rather irritated, called ATC to complain. Susan Stamberg, one of the hosts, made a laughing remark that, if you tried to bite life savers in a closet, you should be sure that the closet door worked, on the air.
The three of us left our Dodge station wagon on a side street in Terre Haute, IN, before the program started, and took the train to California to see David and Jolene, Dan and Darin. We stopped at the Grand Canyon on the way there.
Faye and I left Stacy with Mom and Dad, and Joan and George, for a week or so.
Judging by the calendar, you were conceived during this summer, somewhere in Indiana, we think. We had given up on a second child, and, when we got back, we tried to adopt. We got quite a ways with that, but discovered that we were going to have you, instead. We went to the Great Smokies to meet Georges and Teds (who had Anna by that time). Ted had taken a position at Tennessee Tech, and Georges helped them move. When we got back, your mother had to quit her job and go to bed for a week or so, so she didn't lose you. We survived on frozen meals, made by me.
In the summer of 1981, the four of us went to a game preserve. While on that trip, you started saying "Amah," over and over. We finally (perhaps several days later) decided that that was your first word, which was your own name.
In the summer of 1982, there was a 45th anniversary celebration for Mom and Dad. You and your mother and I stayed in a camper that Mary and Jerry Grade lent us. All of us (I'm not certain about Mom and Dad) went to Joan's parents, in the next county, and left the little kids with someone while we went canoeing. It was on the way there that I somehow got upset with you, and slapped you in the face. You asked "Why you hit me in face, Daddy?" several times. I don't know, and I'm sorry. (It was in about 1977 that Ted and I took the famous canoe ride out of Riverbend Park, near Union City, and swamped the canoe, and ourselves, within 30 seconds. Rich and Stacy, accompanied by David, who owned the canoe, had a nice trip to Union Lake, near where David now lives. Ted and I went back and got dry.)
I believe that all of us, except perhaps Laurie and George II, were together at Christmas 1982. George read to the little ones. (By this time Laurie was over 20, and George II not far behind, so they may have had other obligations at the time. You, Dan and Darin, and Anna, and maybe Andrew, were the little ones. Daryl wasn't born yet.)
In 1983 and 1984, I believe it was, I was on the General Board of The Wesleyan Church, which met in Marion, IN at the time. Stacy was in school during the May meetings, but I took you with me, and you stayed with your grandparents and David and Jolene while I was in the meetings.
I've not been back to Wisconsin, or at least not to Sawyer County, since. David and Mom went back for a school reunion, I believe in 2002. George has been back--Joan's' parents lived within an hour's drive or so. I'm not sure about Ted. You and I and your mother did drive through Wisconsin on our way to Yellowstone, before Wesleyan General Conference in 1992, but through the Southern part.
I love you, Dad.