Wait, what?? Wedding?

Simply.
Must.
Write.

Timing is laughable, I have SO much to do tonight, and I HAVE to get this out.

I dove back in yesterday, reading the rest of 1948 through 1949.
I was so excited: 1950 is next, the year my parents meet and marry!
How exciting to be there when it started!
Only I wasn't.

Before we begin, regarding the end of the relationship with Rod:
Quite its own tale, to be told at another time.
Forgive me for telling this tale out of order...

I eagerly pulled the letters out of the 1950 packet.
Damn! They start in September! They've already met!
She took a summer job in the office where Dad worked.

I knew my parents married three months after they met. 

He said 'I'm headed west, ya coming or staying?' and she went.

What I wanted to read was that he'd swept her off her feet, and they were madly in love.

I knew she'd married in a navy wool suit, so much more practical than a wedding gown. She loved it, said it was really pretty. (Mom is a total clothes horse, more about that later too.) I wanted to read how she picked it out, feeling smart and stylish 
for her new life. 

My parents married November 18, 1950.
There are four letters beforehand: Sept. 26th, Oct 4th, 18th, and 24th.
She's dating Dad -- and four other guys.
Hayrides, movies, parties. Dances, concerts, football games.
Sometimes two dates on the same day.
Musing over the lot of them, their attributes, and what her marriage courses taught her about choosing a good mate. What she likes and dislikes.

By now it's very clear that Mom went to college for her Mrs. degree, but watching her muse so openly leaves me shocked. 

Yet she'd said she felt hemmed in, pressured, and wanted to bust loose and do what she wanted to do. I don't know why she felt pressured to marry at 21; although ah, her mom married at 20. There's just so much she doesn't say. In an earlier letter she described herself as never letting her emotions out, never letting anyone see them. The older I get, the more I see how true that was. I ache for her here.

Pulling each letter from its envelope, 'is this the one where she jumps up and down for joy?'
No.

Pulling the Oct. 24th letter out, the last one,
the one written 25 days before she married my dad,
she had no idea.

She did not yet know her wedding day was less than a month away.

She knew he'd bought rings, and she didn't want him to, she was still actively going out with Al, Jim, Jack and George. Wore her sharp new navy suit on a date with Al to a class buffet supper. She's fascinated by dad though, clearly. Thinks about him more than she'd like, lingering on her mind.

And my dad had game!
He drove a convertible and took her flying in a plane.
She was concerned that he hadn't gone to college, and that he didn't like to party much.
She loved that he was so nice, and so very sweet to her.
And she loved his family, they were so nice to her too.

Completely warms my heart to hear this young woman I've been listening to meet my grandma and grandpa. The connection made, felt... like home.

But the reality is that Mom married Dad much more impulsively than I knew. His west coast job offer suddenly created the opening, but I thought they were already serious, not just casually dating. She was ready to marry, and he was the fellow in front of her 

who asked. 

They married in the family church in Belding. Her first few letters from the cross-country drive honeymoon "I'm awfully happy! I love him more and more every day!" They would stay together 44 years until her passing in 1994.