Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [32]
One year later, they went on a second date. “This is getting serious,” said Grandma Peterson. And despite the slow start, it was. Within a year Mom was on her way to being smitten. But she was troubled: in the Truth marriage to outsiders was forbidden. And she felt strongly that shared faith was the most critical bond of marriage. Dad was a discontented Methodist, but when he asked to attend Sunday meeting with her, Mom told him no. She thought worldly people were only allowed at gospel meetings. That spring, she went to Mexico to visit a pen pal in Guadalajara. She had begun writing to him when she was twelve and he was fifteen. The boy was now a medical student, and engaged to be married. She found him pompous. But she liked his sisters, and enjoyed her time with his family.
Mom had begun praying for a good husband when she was very young, and in Mexico her prayers continued. But now she was praying for the strength to tell my father that she could no longer countenance dating him when she had no intention of marrying outside her faith. On the way home, she rehearsed her speech and redoubled her prayers.
Two surprises awaited her. The first was a letter from the Mexican medical student: he wrote that he had ditched his fiancée and intended to marry my mother. She could come to Guadalajara and be his wife, he said. She would also have to convert to Catholicism, but that was easily arranged.
The second surprise was more pleasant by a mile. With Mom away in Mexico, Dad went directly to her father and asked if he might come to Sunday morning meeting. Grandpa said sure. Moved by what he saw in the quiet gathering, Dad arranged to attend a gospel meeting. He was prepared in his heart: when the meeting was tested, he stood, committing himself to Christ, and, by default, to my mother. They were wed in September on my grandfather’s front lawn against the backdrop of a trellis decorated by autumn leaves. Per Dad’s request, the wedding cake was chocolate. In the portraits, Mom is a dark-haired beauty in a sheath dress, holding a spray of autumn mums. Dad looks like a spiffed-up little boy who won the pine box derby but could bolt the podium. Later it would be discovered that one of the attendants who signed as witness was underage, leading to the delightful possibility that despite their eminent respectability, my parents might officially qualify as shacked up. On those poignant occasions when someone hauls off and calls me a bastard, I peep furtively left and right, and then whisper, “Entirely possible.”
The newlyweds honeymooned in a rented cabin up north near Danbury, Wisconsin. Dad went fishing while Mom read books in the boat. Clearly there was dew on the rose—in the forty-two years since, I have never once seen my mother in a fishing boat. Upon returning to Eau Claire, the couple took up housekeeping in a small downtown apartment, and my father began a job search. Within a month Dad was hired by Archer Daniels Midland to study alternative uses for soybeans, and the young couple moved to St. Paul, Minnesota. Apparently Dad’s was the perfect gig for a science geek—among other things, he experimented with reconstituting soybeans in the form of cheese curls and glue. Throughout my childhood there was always a large tin coal pail in the playroom. It was filled with laminated blocks, and Mom still keeps it in the living room for the grandchildren. I only recently learned that the blocks were manufactured during one of Dad’s experiments—the laminations were held together by soybean glue. I am ill-informed as to the current state of regard for soybeans in the fixatives industry, but I can report that after four decades of grubby mitts and slobber, those blocks are holding fast.
During their engagement, my parents had applied to the Peace Corps. Commonly enough, they wanted to help other people. Specifically, Mom hoped to provide maternal and child health care