20 March 2011

Great – Grandma Adeline’s and Great – Grandpa Arthur’s 92nd Wedding Anniversary

JYeah well, maybe not. But were the two of these folks, indeed, breathing, then today would be that: Great – Grandma Adeline Baach’s and Great – Grandpa Arthur Maas’ 92nd Wedding Anniversary.

I remember at my Grandma Adeline’s death – bedside October 1985, hearing from her about her and Arthur’s day in 1919’s eastern Iowa springtime. She regaled about the fact that for her dress she had actually not gone from out of the Montgomery Wards catalog with the conventional mawwying fabric of the times: black taffeta ... but that she actually had led off the county’s women in being its first bride of the post war to order, sew up and wear, instead, a flowy organza number in ... (gasp !) white !

Into what she changed –– that of her trousseau –– after their promises? That was done up in ... the black taffeta, instead ! All of the county was agog and gaggling when its folks later learned of Adeline’s such the ... breach ... of mawwiage tradition !

Then, tiny – / tiny – boned, itsy bitsy – framed Great – Grandma Adeline, the mounds of her platinum locks as snowy - glistening as ever before and herself born in eastern Iowa on 24 December 1896, giggled and giggled and giggled ... as she queried me, "Well, Syn – thee, so as they say: have you done the math by now?"

"Why, Gramma – Gramma, whatever do you mean?"

"You know, Girl, You know. You have the same birthday, Girl, as your daddy does … the Winter Solstice, not ?! So … ah, soooo Syn – thee, … what’s nine months from the 20th of March ?!"