Some events in life are forever impressed upon your memories. Some vivid and unforgettable, like an aunt spraying her kitchen with whip cream and the laughter and screaming that followed or greeting my father as he returned from overseas, ok maybe the attraction there was the stuff he brought with him. At my house Santa wore a sailor’s uniform sometimes, but there was an air of happiness that I clearly remember surrounding his return. There is one meal in my life that is just such an event vivid, unforgettable, as if it happened yesterday.
Several years ago I was traveling and planned to spend the night in Oklahoma City. I didn’t arrive till nearly midnight but hadn’t had supper. It had been an eventful and nervous filled week of which this day was the culmination. I was familiar with the area, and knew there was a restaurant just down the street from the hotel I checked into, and back then it was likely they only place I could find something to eat that late. Even though it was a Saturday night in the big city I was limited to McDonald’s, McDonald’s or a bar, and at 20 years of age in Oklahoma back then you’d have a tough time getting served in a bar.
That night it was a Big Mac, fries, and a large milk shake. Not the large you get today with whip cream, a cherry, in a much smaller cup likely half the size, but a truly large shake, a meal by itself. Mind you at 20 years of age I was little concerned with the calorie or fat content. This Saturday I will celebrate the 35th anniversary of that evening. That McDonald’s meal was the first that DeAnn and I shared together as husband and wife, near midnight on the western edge of Oklahoma City.
35 years, that’s a long time by today’s standards and we have shared a number of meals together, some at a long dining room table full of kids. Some memorable ones where we burned the holiday ham filling the house with smoke, just prior to the arrival of non-family guests. Some simple ones, cheese and crackers spread out on the coffee table, some fancy holiday ones at a decorated table, some just left overs dug from the back of the refrigerator, and a number of meals that consisted of a large tub of buttered popcorn and a single large Coke that you only find at a movie theater. Some shared in a small upstairs apartment above a dilapidated garage, others around a campfire under the stars. Some meals we ate alone, some together, some we have shared with others, some at exotic restaurants, and many just on the couch in front of the TV side by side. Now occasionally we share meals with grand kids. None are so fixed in my mind as that very first one we shared together.
The next morning, our first Sunday as husband and wife, I cannot tell you what we ate for breakfast but we did attend church together, that event is also pressed into my memory. 35 years of setting next to each other in church, really closer to 36 1/2 minus a few skipped Sundays. Big churches, small churches, country churches and city ones. Some with pews, some with chairs, some formal, some not so much, some where we participated in the ministry, some were we were regenerated. 35 years together with a shared faith, much like the shared meals, sometimes working alone, sometimes together, and sometimes with others.
35 years of sharing; shared faith, shared doubts, shared happiness, shared aggravations, shared joys, shared disappointments, shared respect, shared love, and most importantly shared fries and shared milk shakes.
If you are out this weekend and find yourself near a McDonald’s close to midnight buy yourself a large shake, raise it in a toast to Mr. and Mrs. Gaddis and wish us several more Happy Meals together, then join us in church Sunday morning.
David
