Youth Isn’t Wasted on the Young
We Should Support Their Dreams
For almost three decades, I lived at the end of a gravel road that turned into a logging trail running three miles through the woods behind my house.
It was my home. The home my husband and I built for our family, and the home we’d envisioned since we first met and married.
Actually, we already knew each other from our long-lost childhood days.
We reconnected for the second time ten years later. In three months time, we tied the knot. Just the two of us and two young witnesses who watched us take our vows. We had just turned nineteen.
Boy were we ever dead serious about those vows, too.
This was back in 1970 when a lot of kids were still getting married straight out of high school. I look at my granddaughter who will be thirteen soon and I can’t imagine her tying the knot six years from now. Not to mention having a baby of her own right away.
But heck! Compared to my grandparents who I was living with at the time of our second meeting, I was a mature woman when I got married.
My grandmother married my grandfather when she was 14 years old. She hadn’t even had her first period yet. I kid you not. Of course, the average lifespan was about half of what it is today. When she was born if you made it beyond age five, you had beat the odds.
So, I guess it’s all relative, because the year before I was born, they doubled the average lifespan.
Which meant two things really. One, my chances of living to 78 were getting better each day. And, two, I also stood a good chance of being married for more than sixty years.
Well, we haven’t quite beaten the odds, but we’re getting close.
This year, we celebrated our 52nd wedding anniversary. A jaw breaking number of years of marital bliss that fewer and fewer people can relate to these days. Because although more and more people are living beyond age 78, they’re not as easily making it to the “until death do thee part” phase of the wedding vows.
Unlike my husband, I had a colorful life leading up to our second meeting.
Because he met me, he’s led a colorful life. In all fairness, he had no idea what he was getting himself into when we were reunited, but let’s just say, I turned his world upside down in more ways than one.
Our lives up until that point couldn’t have been more different. He was Leave it to Beaver and I was Mosquito Coast.
For those of you who are too young for the TV and movie references, let me put it this way. He was raised in a typical 1950s home, and I was raised on the edge of civilization.
When my sister and I were kids, we spent a few weeks several summers in a row at my grandparent’s house.
My parents dropped my sister and I off at their house in a central-Indiana-factory town, and we spent the next two weeks being catered to like royalty. If anyone was blessed with the perfect grandparents, it was me. They devoted those two weeks to spoiling us.
The rules were stay up as late as you want, sleep until you wake up, and eat whatever you want.
They lived across the street from my husband’s family. In fact, my grandmother used to babysit for my husband and his little brother. So, it made sense that my sis and I would get together with the two boys. They were convenient playmates.
Apparently, my husband fell in love with me during those lazy summer days.
We played cowboys and Indians and covered wagons and pioneers. You can see in the photo that he was good at role playing. I mean the way he looks down the barrel of that gun, who would ever guess that he’d turn out to be a liberal leftie.
I even orchestrated a talent show for my grandparents to watch. My husband played his Hawaiian guitar while I performed the hula dance.
Once, my husband tried to kiss me. We were sitting on the floor in his semi dark walk-in closet while he made shadow figures on the wall with his hands. Don’t ask me why we were in the closet together. I assume my husband had planned to seduce me.
At any rate, he formed the quintessential rabbit-head shadows for my entertainment and then said …
“Do you know what these are?” he asked.
“Yep, rabbits,” I said
Then he brought the two shadow creatures together in a long kiss, rabbit lips pressed tight and ears all perky.
“Do you know what they’re doing?” he asked with a tease in his voice.
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you wanna?” he asked with a sidelong glance.
“Nope,” I said without hesitation.
That put a stop to his antics for the next 10 years until we met for the second time.
If truth be told, I was kind of used to boys trying to kiss me. Back in the day, lots of boys chased me and even though they never caught me, I knew what they wanted.
I was a good girl though. It was my job to say no, and I did.
At any rate, about ten years after the dark closet experience, we reconnected. I’d just been disowned by my family because as soon as I turned eighteen, I left home and the religious cult my dad had started. My parents said I was trampling through the blood of Jesus Christ.
I called it trying to lead my own life.
At any rate, I ended up at my grandparents and my husband was still living across the street. He was freshly graduated from high school with no big plans for his life other than working in one of the local factories like his dad had done. He already had his first job as a draftsman.
We met or re-met and this time I kissed him.
I’d just started down my own path but three months after we were reunited, we got married. And thus began his new life that took him down a very different path than the one he’d always imagined for himself.
We had several important things in common.
One was our love of nature and life off the beaten track. Two, we were both nonconformists. Every day wasn’t sunshine and roses for us, but these two commonalities remained a constant. We built our home at the end of the gravel road that turned into a logging trail running three miles through the woods and raised two kids there. It turned out to be a good home although it took many years to finish it while we were living in it. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know how we did it.
Sometimes when I look back on those days, I’m amazed at how resilient and capable we were.
It’s often said that life is wasted on the young, because it generally takes years to learn life’s lessons. But I say that there’s nothing like the vitality and energy of two idealistic dreamers to conquer the odds. How refreshing to indulge the dreams of young people before life crushes their spirits. They are the only hope for the future. It’s their job to clean up the messes their elders leave behind.
I’ve always placed my bet on the next generation not on old fogies.
Times have changed and so have we, but we’re still nature lovers and nonconformists. We sold our home in Maine seventeen years ago and traveled the world for several years, living everywhere but nowhere.
Yeah, that was my idea. but my husband followed me into the wild blue yonder because I think he still likes me — a lot.
Teresa is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
