Betty calmly said, “You know I picketed, don’t you?”
Alex’s eyes grew wide like saucers as she turned her chair and body posture toward her 79-year-old grandmother and inquisitively asked, “Wha-aa-aat?”
I wondered if Alex began to conjure up visions of her Grandma Betty on the front lines facing policemen in riot gear or leading chants with a bullhorn in front of a mob of a thousands followers.
It started with a simple question, really.
My daughter Alex had asked: “Grandma, when did you add on?” (referring to the home they bought on Rose Lane in 1957.)
We were having lunch at Olive Garden when my sister Leta recalled “I liked when Debbie and I shared a room with two double beds in the back bedroom with the upright piano.”
I recalled sharing the little bedroom with the trundle bed with Jerri and Kevin. Hiding inside the pushed-in trundle bed was perfect for hide-n-seek games, until your hair got caught on the top bed’s metal springs — or Kevin figured out both Jerri and I were hiding in there and he jumped on the top trundle mattress to squish us out like too much jelly on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Frank and Betty’s spacious three-bedroom was beginning to close in on Mom, about the time my brother David arrived on the scene — child No. 6 and the seventh would follow in 1973. To give a little more humorous perspective, Dad grew up the eldest of 11 in a farmhouse and Mom was an only child whose mother passed away when she was four. So one can imagine the marital communication skills, haggling, compromising and bartering that must occur to raise seven children in a godly, frugal and loving environment.
My mom explained her picketing this way: “I had a poster board sign and walked around the front yard. The sign simply said “I NEED MORE ROOM!”
Betty Jane’s picketing was quite successful as it brought the two leaders back to the bargaining table. Although purchasing another home was a bargaining option and they did look at other homes, they negotiated to add on another bedroom, bathroom, enlarge the kitchen and add a family room which was completed in 1969. A sunroom was added in the early 1990s.
I asked Dad later if he remembered Mom’s protest. With instant Polaroid-picture clarity, he smiled.
“Yes! When I came home from work, she had a picket sign and was marching around the tree in the front yard with all you kids behind her.”
Communication and compromise — in its many forms.
And that, my friends, is how a marriage stays together for more than 60 years.
