I’m Not A Very Good Wife

I’m not a very good wife of a musician. I hate the mess that the instruments make. I’ve looked at that mess on and off for forty-seven years. I call my recreation room a wreck room. But, I also have known marriage is not a one-way street. It’s not ‘all my way or the highway’. The give and take is an important part of marriage.

In the early years when you start making a home together, it’s not always easy since you’re both use to things your way. The give and take was a battle at first. I will say, I was kind of spoiled and naive thinking marriage was a fairy tale where you set up housekeeping and all goes smoothly. It doesn’t. We made messes and there was no mom there to clean them up. It was up to us to do housekeeping, pay the bills, provide food.

I learned over the years that I make messes too with my hobbies, and he has to look at my mess. Life is not always neat and tidy. Marriage is not always neat and tidy. It is a continuing growing process. If you love someone truly then the give and take isn’t so bad once you get past the spoiled part of youth. It’s not always an uphill battle, and you learn that giving is more rewarding than taking and always getting your own way.

The instruments that I look at now bring back all the memories of a man’s life. The music he made as a young traveling musician. The music he made when he came off the road and formed his own band. The music he made when the children were old enough to pass the talent onto whether they choose to use it in life at all, and the music that his life has given us in all our married years together.

I learned that I hate the mess the instruments make when spread all over a room, but the sound when all played together is worth it.

Loving a musician can be an awesome adventure.

Up To The Mountain

Recently, my son said that his girlfriend had rented a cottage in Tennessee that was large enough to sleep 18 people, and we were invited to come along for the long week-end. We were packed in a heartbeat…ready for a road trip after the winter months, and knew the weather would be pretty heading South of where we live.

There were many activities planned each day, and it was a whirlwind week-end. While there, my hubby tires easily and had a busy week at work before the trip so he didn’t go on many of the activites. I decided I would drive him up to the top of the mountain, and it would also be a great photo opportunity. He had never been to Gatlinburg to visit nor had he been up on the mountain.

While we were driving to Tennessee and also up the mountain, it took me back many years in my mind. When I married my husband, he was a musician who traveled on the road. I was only 17 and he was 19 when we married. Being young, it was quite an adventure. The trip that week-end brought me back to how we use to have our clothes packed in the back seat of the car, as that was our home, and to how young and different we were then.

We have traveled 46 years together since those days, and life has taken us in many directions. We were so young, and thought we knew what it was all about. Were we in for some surprises along the way. We only traveled those first few years before we settled down to raise a family. We have stayed in the same place for the past 30 plus years. My hubby gave up being a traveling musician, worked a job, but we did have a family band that lasted until our youngest was about 16 (that’s another story in itself).

That day driving to Tennessee though it was kind of nice to also travel back in my mind and remember those young, carefree days. If we could only have the insight that we have today, would our life be the same as it is now, would we make different decisions or mistakes.

Reminiscing can sometimes be fun when your traveling up a mountain on a sun-shiny day, and you’re still together and life seems good.

(pics from the mountain at the bottom of the page) enjoy!! and stop back and visit me often.