My parents were of that generation known as the greatest.
After Pearl Harbor, dad left his law practice, which he loved, for the army, which he did not.
He was an attorney. He could have spent the war in a nice, comfortable office. He chose to spend it in a tank, which wasn’t comfortable.
After he was captured in North Africa, he spent most of the next few years in some of Hitler’s finer POW camps.
He escaped, toward the end of the war, made his way home by way of Ukraine. (Every time I hear news there, I think of him.) Returned to his law practice and met mom on a blind date. They were married a year later.
Dad gave mom some lovely gifts, at Christmas and on her birthday. He remembered their anniversary every year. But on Valentine’s day, he never gave mom so much as a card. February 14 was the day he was captured by the Germans.
Both my parents were music lovers. They loved the big bands, of course, especially Duke Ellington.
Mom loved opera. Dad did not. If the opera involved a sword fight, he could critique the fencing. (He’d fenced in college.) Otherwise, he was not interested.
When mom was given season tickets to the opera. (Box seats no less!), he was happy to let her go with me, or my sister, or one of his friends, while he stayed home with the dog.
There came one night, when mom couldn’t find anyone to go to the opera with her. My sister and I were off at college. None of her friends where interested.
Mom decided she didn’t want to miss the performance and announced that she was going by herself.
Dad said it wouldn’t be safe. She’d have to walk back to the car by herself at night.
Mom said she’d be fine. There were two men in the seats behind her. They were very knowledgeable about opera, and she and the gentlemen had become great friends.
Dad announced that he was going to take her to the opera.
So it was, that my father sat through Donizetti’s “Elixer of Love”, in which there are no sword fights.
He wrote to me, afterwards, that he considered jumping out of the balcony, like John Wilkes Booth, but decided it was too high.
The two gentlemen in the seats behind them were a couple. They were more interested in mom’s antique jewelry, than they were in her.
Mom was past fifty, when all of this was happening. She saw no reason to hide the fact. Her hair was a lovely silver gray. She didn’t wear much in the way of makeup. She dressed for comfort as well as style.
The year before, she had quit smoking, and taken up jellybeans and M&Ms. As a result, she had put on some weight.
Dad hadn’t noticed.
As far as he was concerned, she was still the lovely woman he had married.
He wasn’t going to leave her alone with a couple of opera loving roue’s .
That is love.
Dad never gave mom so much as a card, on February 14.
But, after twenty some years, two kids, and the assorted tragedies, great and small, that are part of every family’s life, he still saw her as the lovely lady he married.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is worth more than diamonds.
Happy Valentine’s day.