Still celebrated after 50 years

                Only a few days ago, I realized this February 27th would be 50 years since the night I met my future husband, Jim.  This was not my first blind date, but it rendered any future ones unnecessary.  Because of the kindness of friends and the providential hand of God, I met the answer to my simple prayer to God: please bring someone for me to love who will love me back.  

                Every year we celebrated this day, sometimes with an overnight stay as our children got older.  One especially enjoyable outing was at Pere Marquette Lodge close to Grafton, Illinois, before its renovation.  Bed and Breakfast destinations, at least two in Lafayette Square, were settings we found interesting, especially when there were other visitors.  However, one of our stays in Lafayette Square was in a three story building, and we were the only overnight occupants.  Even the owners weren't around during the night.

                Tonight is the fourth year I have remembered that first night on my own.  Doing so at this point doesn't make me sad; oh, no, I feel thankful to have found that man who I would love and would love me back.  That simple prayer turned out to be so much more than I imagined when I prayed.  This fulfills a favorite scripture from Ephesians 3:20 :  Our God is able to do exceedingly abundantly more than we can ask or imagine.  Indeed.

                

                

What's in a Name?

 

                   I know virtually nothing about the day I was born—not the time of day, length of labor, birth weight and length—nothing except the date, February 21st, and the St. Louis hospital.  However, in the family lore, I remember hearing something about the name I was given.  My mother had an older sister named Rayma, a creation combining my grandmother’s maiden name, Ray, with Ma, what the family called one of its senior members. 

                My parents didn’t have many worldly goods in their apartment but they did have a baby chest when their first child, my older brother, was coming.  The story goes that my father liked the name “Rayma” so much that he painted it on the back of this baby chest.  However, it would have to go on hold when the baby was a boy who was named William Howard Owens, Jr.  Now one would think with such excitement about a girl’s name building, when a baby girl was born about three and a half years later, she would be called by this wonderful, creative and unusual name.  It was after all, my first name.  But for whatever reason—I wish I knew—a middle name as distinctive as “Kay” would be what they called me.

                Once I started attending school, teasing and name calling started when each new teacher would call me “Rayma” before I let him or her know I went by “Kay.” At the time, a popular television show was called, “Ramar, Queen of the Jungle.”  So part of the teasing was connected to this show , a comparison I did not find humorous.  Generally, I was called “Kay-Kay,” a much kinder and appealing version of my name.

                I was not a trailblazer in my family when I decided to go by my actual first name.  My younger brother was named Glen Michael, and we called him Michael.  In the 50s and 60s, it was a very popular name, so as my family moved to a different school district when Michael was in middle school, he chose to use his first name, one much less common.  Perhaps his path planted a seed for future possibilities for me.

Beginning in the early 90s, I saw various doctors and specialists, including some at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.  I grew tired of telling them I used my middle name, so I just went along with Rayma.  Often nurses would say they liked the unusual name which they often claimed they had not heard before.  Actually, I was in line for getting an ID at a big state school, the University of Missouri in Columbia, before I met another person other than my aunt with the same name.

When my husband and I left our hometown and lifetime residence in St. Louis to come to Charleston in 2015, I decided to use Rayma as my name.  A contributing factor in making this change was what I had learned about the word “rhema,” spelled differently but pronounced the same. When I started attending charismatic Bible study and prayer groups, I learned rhema means “utterance” or “thing said” in Greek.  In the book of Hebrews, chapter four, it is the word described as “living and active.”  Knowing this also moved me toward my first name.  However, our daughter and her family had lived in Charleston for three years before we made the move; her church members and neighbors had known me as Kay and probably thought I was a little loony suddenly using a different name.  Such things keep life interesting.

Now my husband had called me Kay for over forty-six years and was not too keen on the name change in our new life on the Illinois prairie.  He always called me Kay, the name of the girl he fell in love with so many years ago.   

   

Memories of Special Clothes, Colors and People

    Often special moments—good or bad—are associated with clothing, something about it like color, style, appeal.  My family was not rich by any means, but my mother did have a lady make some very special dresses for me.  I can still see one in my mind, a grey and pink see through like material, and I, the adorable, dark haired little girl with a favorite little golden locket.

                My older brother became a high school star basketball player in the 60s wearing uniforms very much like the ones in the Hoosier movie.  Being four years younger, I looked up to him and enjoyed watching the cheerleaders in their V neck sweaters with a big N on them for Normandy (school made famous in 2014 Black Lives Matter beginning). Those were exciting times for the school and our family.

                Without a doubt, it was not Jim’s stylish look or even attempt to look attractive that won my heart.  Those first few weeks he would come over to my house with SIUE apparel, often with holes here and there.  Despite my growing affection for him, I did wonder if he had any decent clothes to wear in a box or closet somewhere—unknown apparently.

                But the color and dress that I wore on our first date was special and remained so.  I had made the dress, a simple A-line with a U shaped, ruffle-enhanced neckline.  The color, a magenta, deep cranberry is a flattering one for us winter girls with dark hair and eyes.  Does anyone even talk about that season coloring guide anymore?

                That night late in February, that dress, that color, and the time to be in Jim’s company, just thinking about it all does not make me sad, but so very thankful for our 45 years of marriage.  I spent many years operating with a fairly empty dance card, and then along came Jim.  At some point in those first months, he returned my record set of Jesus Christ Super Star.  When I took the lid off, inside was a chiffon scarf just that magenta color with a little note from a song in “My Fair Lady”: “but the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.” This “I don’t care what I look like” fellow was quite the romantic, going to the theater to see “Sound of Music” seven times while attending a preparatory Catholic boys’ high school.

                Today that scarf hangs on a ladder from a Christmas display that Jim bought for me at Carson’s department store after we moved to Charleston from St. Louis.  The ladder stands near the front door, and the scarf hangs on one cross bar, a reminder of a special night, a special dress and a special man.