Oh, How We Danced On The Night We Were Wed: The Story Of Mom & Dad's Married Life As Told By Their Third Child, The Mishegas Master

It’s morning here in Morton Grove, where I’m at the public library checking my email, as I still don’t have the internet at home. Why? Because I am waiting for another month to pass before I can get settled & get service, I think, anyway.

Looking at my emails, especially the ones from a Jewish dating service called J-Date are silly at times, kind of pathetic at best. Apparently, I was supposed to have set in stone, firmed up plans with someone to meet over coffee & I didn’t and she had to go and nitpick about it. Future wife material, you think?

Is that someone I want to even consider spending part of my time with on planet Earth? I’m not sure, if she is already behaving like this now, especially in light of the fact I’ve asked for a photograph twice & she’s made up excuses and not emailed one to me.

Well, as Mom & Dad say collectively and separately, there is always someone else. And they’re right, which is why I am turning my focus today toward my parents.

Tomorrow, Sunday, July 31, they will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. That’s a major accomplishment in their lives and their children’s lives to say the least. I’m pretty proud of them, as I am sure that my siblings Naomi, Louie, Benjy & Joey all are.

Back when they married in 1955, times were probably a bit simpler; Dad & Mom were college graduates the previous month in June at the University of Illinois at the Chicago & Champaign-Urbana & campuses, respectively. So the fairytale goes, Mom met Dad during her Thanksgiving break from college in late November 1954 and began to date from that point onward.

It’s hard to imagine my Dad & Mom so young and my Dad with hair for that matter! And Mom being slightly more filled out in terms of body poundage than she is now. Pictures that I have of Dad & Mom back then look cool & cute.

There’s a photo I have of Mom posing on top of an automobile in shorts, while I have one of Dad standing alone in a leather jacket, with nothing but prairie in the background. I’m presuming the photo was taken in Oklahoma, because that’s where they first lived shortly after they were married, as Dad did his basic duty in the United States Army, while Mom worked a job as a secretary on the army base.

After Dad was finished serving his time in the army, that they moved back home to Illinois, specifically Park Forest, where Mom’s parents lived at the time. It was back home in Illinois in 1957, where they settled where my sister Naomi was born. Sometime later, a second child was born to them, Louie in mid-1960, while a second son, third & middle child Sidney (me) was born to them at the end of 1961.

A few years later, as the Beatles stormed America & Paul McCartney celebrated his 22nd birthday, Paul was pleased as punch (so he told me in 1990 during an interview at Soldier Field in Chicago) when Mom & Dad gave him a wonderful birthday present; a third son and eventually one of the greatest bass players in the USA like McCartney himself, my younger brother, third son & fourth child to my parents, Benjy.

In 1965, my parents moved to the all-American city of Niles back then, so Dad could be semi-closer to a pharmaceutical job he had back then, still only 30-40 minutes of commuting, without much traffic back then. In 1968, the Yippies ruled the world, well perhaps only Lincoln Park during the wild & rowdy 1968 Democratic National Convention in neighboring Chicago. It was in early August that year that the fifth and final child of theirs, also a son and youngest of course was born onto them, namely Joey, who has seemingly lived up to his name with some distinction.

In the 1970s, after Joey was old enough to go to school, Mom decided to go back to college and get a degree in teaching at Northeastern University in Chicago. I used to go with her; I was about 10 by then & used to hang out at the college radio station WZRD, while she was in class. By 1974, she was student-teaching and well on her way to getting her first & only teaching job for the next 24 years at Rhodes Elementary in River Grove.

It was sometime during the late 1990s when Dad decided to retire and eventually, Mom did too. During the winter season of 2000, they took on a new identity: snowbirds and drove to Scottsdale, Arizona, where they would spend the next few winters until they decided to move there permanently.

It’s been a few years since they left the Chicago-area and have lived there, enjoying their lives righteously. Mom still teaches, mainly tutors and home-schools, while Dad likes being retired. I still call them a few times a week when I have time or just feel like it. I try to get there at least once a year.

I don’t know too much about their marriage other than saying I lived in the middle of it, growing up inside the wonderful swirling haze of it all & that was the best part, being part of their lives then just as it is today. I love them very, very much.

Earlier in the week I was asked by friends what they planned to do for their 50th wedding anniversary. I said I didn’t know, probably hang out with each other and tell each other how much they love the other. That’s what parents, couples & lovers usually do.

They don’t expect much from their children in the way of cards, presents, etc. they will get phone calls of course, because it is in all of their children’s eyes a happy, happy time for all concerned. All my parents want is for their children to be happy and successful, which is all anybody should ever want to begin with.