My husband’s recollection of my first meeting with his parents goes something like this: “Mom and Dad, this is my new girlfriend. By the way, we’re planning to buy a house together. Oh, and also, by the way, we’re planning to get married.”
If they were surprised, they didn’t give any indication, not with even the slightest word or twitch or full-out faint. This is hugely to their credit, since they had dispatched their eldest out to the west coast only six months earlier and the last thing they expected he would bring home on his first visit was a fiancee.
I can only hope that our own children won’t spring a similar type of surprise on us because I’m not sure that I would react with such grace. From the very beginning I learned that open-mindedness was one of the most endearing qualities of both my in-laws, and they had done a great job in passing that along to their son, my husband, who would, in turn, be as great in passing that along to our kids.
We wanted our parents to meet before our October wedding, but there wasn’t going to be an opportunity for us to be there, so we set up what you might call a blind date for them. My father took the lead in choosing a restaurant convenient to both. I may have forgotten to mention that as far as their sense of culinary adventure went, salt and black pepper were about as wild as it got in the Brossman house. So my parents’ favorite Chinese restaurant probably was not going to be the best choice.
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall at their first encounter. The report we received from my parents was that Bill and Lucille were lovely people, and they really seemed to enjoy the food. We got a similarly glowing report from Bill’s parents. I think it was only years later that I found out that my father-in-law suffered indigestion for days later because of the garlic and red pepper. “But we ordered it mild,” said my spice-loving parents. Fortunately, that was the only kind of culture clash we would ever experience between our very different families over what will be 25 years of marriage for us this October.
When they were very little, Katie and Molly seemed to confuse Nanny and Pop’s house with Santa’s. The house always smelled like something had been freshly baked, a warm mix of cinnamon and chocolate. Pop was into collecting things, and there was always some fascinating new addition to marvel over, whether it was a vintage piggy bank, antique toy, or piece of Depression glass.
Pop loved his model train set, which took up a good corner of the basement. There were whole towns built out of miniature houses, cars, and people, and the details were so vivid you could imagine yourself in the middle of one of the street, as if you had landed in some wild Twilight Zone adventure. The kids could put on conductors’ hats and toot the whistle. They also learned the art of enthusiasm — what it meant to be wholly and passionately into something — from Pop, and his almost childlike delight in his varied hobbies and fresh discoveries.
Nanny and Pop’s house was also reminiscent of a candy store because though Pop loved many things, he really loved candy, so you could count on magical glass jars filled with sour balls and licorice — red and black and sometimes even chocolate.
There was a gumball machine with a bowl of pennies next to it, so ever since Will was big enough to turn the dial, it’s been a ritual to hit the gumballs on the way in and on the way out.
Pop is the original William Francis Brossman; Bill is a junior, and I pressed on with the tradition by giving the big name to our small boy, and proudly adding a III at the end. I have expressed my desire that Will continue the tradition with his own son some day. I can live with the disappointment of no Euna Junior in the family, but there are some things on which I just don’t want to compromise, though I guess it’s really not my choice.
One of my favorite pictures of the original WFB shows a well-muscled, handsome young man with a tennis racket in hand, wearing a huge grin, indicating that he probably just won the match. He was quite the tennis player back in the day. He was also quite the table tennis player as well, which is how he caught “the girl,” my mother-in-law. She was the younger sister of his older brother’s friend, and he asked her to play. “I was able to beat him sometimes back then,” she recalls.
“What happened after you got married?”
“Well, then he wiped me out,” she laughs. “I think he was holding back while we were dating.”
This past June, my in-laws celebrated their 65th anniversary. My parents celebrated their 55th, which means that between both sets of grandparents, there are 120 years of matrimony. While I am sure there have been bumps over the wild roller coaster of life, I can’t think of a better example of stability for our kids.
They say you need to give your children roots and wings to thrive, and we are lucky that our kids have had all four grandparents to give them both. The oldest, Pop, will be 90 years old in November, and grandma, the youngest, my mom, turned 80 this year. We count every day with them as a treasure not to be taken for granted. We understand that more than anything else, the gift of time that they have been able to give to our children is one that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
