6.6.03 racing

Today is my parents thirty-third wedding anniversary.

They were teenagers when they met at a destruction derby. She didn't believe that Lavender was his last name, and I doubt he could pronounce her first name.

But my father had a cool car and my mother was a cool girl. When I think of them as teenagers, I picture the first Grease movie -- my mother would have been Rizzo and my father would have been one of the other guys, one who worked on the cars and didn't have a speaking part. That movie cuts out after the senior jamboree, but real life continues.

The weekend after my parents graduated from high school they got married at the wrecking yard. Then I showed up, the changeling, the creepy baby reciting poetry, the toddler with crazy eyes, the girl who had cancer.

Those two innocent teenagers racing cars on country backroads probably thought that life would be fun and easy, or at least normal. I have no idea how they managed to raise me and pay the medical bills and stay together all this long while. Lots of people would have cut and run. But my father sold his cars and worked endless hours pumping gas. My mother worked her way up from a hotel maid to an office job so we could have health insurance and a home.

They are not sentimental people, and they don't lament what was lost or never achieved. I doubt they will celebrate their anniversary. But I think their story is important. My parents faced extraordinary challenges and beat the odds. They're still together.

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