Lessons from a life and 50 years of marriage in the Lowcountry

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a day ago

After 50 years of marriage, I'd like to say my beautiful wife and I have come a long way, but we haven't.
Certainly there could be better things to tell her as we mark our golden anniversary this weekend.
Sybil and I roared into the region and so-called adulthood in 1975 in a musty 1964 Chevrolet Chevelle I'd paid $400 for that summer.
We headed for the South Carolina Lowcountry, where we remain glued to the pluff mud of life.
Headmaster Dan Dempsey had offered us both a job at Thomas Heyward Academy in Ridgeland, and that's where we wound up right out of Erskine College where we met in Due West.
On our honeymoon in North Carolina, I looked in the phone book at the Days Inn, searching for a fine restaurant. I decided the way to tell if it was a nice restaurant was to ask if they had mushrooms on the salad bar. They did.
Today, we live all of 35 miles from the little house in Grahamville we rented back then from Charlie and Rebecca Malphrus for $90 a month.
I misgauged the timing for our first paycheck, so we actually started this gig in the hole after banker Jimmy Rhodes overlooked my knocking knees with a smile to lend us a couple hundred bucks.
In the Lowcountry, we found wonderful people who called each other Bo and talked funny, eh?
We learned there are people in this world who ride sandy roads shrouded by gracious trees — to hunt snakes.
We didn't know it at the time, but those roads — and the john boats of Bolan Hall Landing — were binding themselves to our DNA. That's why it hurts today to see that rare jewel of earth get swallowed by so-called progress.
Sybil taught language arts for 31 years, mostly middle school on Hilton Head Island, our home town. And I worked for the local newspaper.
Delmar Rivers gave me a start at The Jasper County News. My mother-in-law parted with her old portable typewriter.
A man in Beaufort cleaned it as good as new, and I clumsily banged my way through the 'Typing in 10 Easy Lessons' booklet, my jerky stops and starts sounding like the freight trains I hopped during my misspent youth.
Sybil and I had two beautiful children, Burke and Ann Talley, now grown. We look back on it all in our so-called retirement and wonder how in the world we did it.
It was survival, one day at a time. Life was a blur. For decades. It hit me hard on an afternoon I left the office to attend the memorial service for a snake-collecting friend that was held deep in the woods at the ruins of the Thomas Heyward home in Jasper County. On the dash back to the office, I wondered where the time went.
Now, we see the care our son and his divine wife are giving to our perfect grandson and think we were horrible parents. But then, both children prove that wrong.
Now, I look in the mirror and ask, 'Who's that?'
These days, I want to make only right turns. A 35-mile trip to Beaufort feels like an overnight flight to Shanghai. I still write a regular column each week, and I wonder if I've turned into the old grouch who complains in the newspaper and tells people to get off my lawn.
Nothing makes sense any more. College football players are paid millions of dollars. Baseball starters only pitch four innings. The United States Capitol has been besieged by insurrectionists. The 'social media' that consumes us is largely unsociable.
Life has come full circle as my dear mother, now 96, who has doted over me and prayed for me every day of my life is in a nursing-home bed, needing the loving ballast she always provided in good times and in bad.
Fifty years of marriage has proven that this world is held together by good people. We've been blessed with magnificent siblings, in-laws, aunts and uncles, cousins, bosses, work colleagues, neighbors and friends.
We've been blessed with an unmatched place to call home.
I've learned that 'this too shall pass' and that you don't have to resolve everything 'this red hot minute.'
I've learned that when things are bad, you list everything you're thankful for.
I've learned that faith is the strongest foundation.
Maybe the best symbol of it all is the cast iron skillet Sybil and I bought 50 years ago at the hardware store in Ridgeland. It's nothing fancy. It's steady and sturdy. And if you let it, the relic will serve up life's finest delicacies, like shrimp in brown gravy, or a pan of crispy, crusty cornbread.
Much better than mushrooms on the salad bar.
David Lauderdale may be reached at [e-mail].
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