Sweetest Day

Image: Jefferson and Denise June 26, 1982. Credit: Sue Johnson Smith.

Sweetest Day happens next Saturday and I'm not prepared. Truthfully, I'm never prepared. I've always seen Sweetest Day as the most concocted and artificial of all 'holidays.' I used to blame Hallmark, but they are innocent. Sweetest Day began in 1921 in Cleveland, Ohio (of course) to sell chocolate. It was proclaimed The Sweetest Day of the Year according to Wikipedia. (Writer's Note: I understand the dangers of relying on Wikipedia for any fact, but I write fiction, so who cares?) I do think it is interesting that Sweetest Day falls on a No Kings protest day this year. Little Sunbury, Ohio (population 9,422) is holding a No Kings protest on the village square at 11am on October 18. (This is Delaware county; they are also holding a Charlie Kirk memorial on the 14th.)

My journey to having a reason to celebrate sweetest day began on April 18, 1979, the day I met Denise on a bus outside Quebec City, Canada. I was a seventeen-year-old senior and Denise was a sixteen-year-old junior. We lived about ten miles apart, attended rival high schools, and met 800 miles from home. I noticed Denise immediately, but I was painfully shy and made no effort to talk with her. On the second day of the trip, while sitting in the seat ahead of me on the Greyhound Bus, Denise turned around and asked the question that changed our lives. "You don't talk much, do you?"

I looked up from my book and said "No."

Denise is the poster child for resilience and persistence and didn't give up. We spent the rest of the trip together. When we got back to Ohio, Denise was up front that she had a boyfriend and she was waiting for him to ask her to 'go together.' (This was Springfield, Ohio in the 1970s.) I was much bolder in my response this time: "I'd go with you," I said. And I did.

We got married in June,1982, at the end of my 3rd year at Ohio State. Denise was 19 and I had just turned 21. I had also just changed my major to English after having taken as many creative writing courses as I could as a non-major. Fortunately, I was on the six-year plan.

Our oldest, Rosemary, was born in March 1985, three months before I graduated. Denise had been laid off in January, so we had no health insurance. I was working 40 hours a week as a student but only making $3.35 an hour. Our OB-GYN never charged us a dollar for his services. He ended up delivering all three of our kids: Gaelen in 1986 while I was in grad school and Erin in 1988. Denise had to stop working while she was pregnant with Erin for health reasons. I worked as a sales manager for a telemarketing company. In 1988, there was no parental leave, and I was fired for trying to take two weeks of accrued vacation to be home with the new baby. We had three babies in 39 months and never had health insurance for any of them.

Denise went to college as an adult student in 1998 to become a social worker. She was working fulltime, so it took seven years for her to complete her degree. I was so proud of her commitment to her studies and to the idea of helping others. She has been doing that work for twenty years; serving people marginalized by our society.

This past June we celebrated 43 years of marriage. We now have 5 grandsons, and I can't imagine a sweeter life. I leave a message on her work phone every morning to tell her that. Every day is Sweetest Day.

We cannot abide cruelty. There is no place for it in a moral and just society.

Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to https://readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway/love/1 you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!