Dan is a first-time Father of the Bride

  

          Molly is getting married in ten days.  The story of her meeting Tip Rawding is a great one.  Sit tight.  Six years ago, Molly taught math to 8^th graders at Rye Junior High School in NH.   The school secretary, one Paula Rawding, said in so many words, Would you (Molly) like to go out with my son Tip?  RJHS is a small school and things could get messy if the date didn’t work out, so Molly declined.  Life moved on.  That summer Molly took a part-time job with Green Penguin Landscaping, as it turns out, where Tip worked.   They hit it off, but alas Tip was dating someone else by then.  During that summer, Molly said to Hannah and me, I blew it [by not going out on that date].  But what could she do? 

          A year later Molly fulfilled one of her lifelong dreams and moved to a warmer part of our country, Virginia, to teach in the Alexandria City Public Schools as a middle school math teacher.  Ever the go-getter, a year later she applied to a PhD program in Math Education Leadership at George Mason University.  Part of the application process required her to get letters of recommendation.  Her former principal at RJHS was a natural to write one.   When Molly called RJHS, she again got the school secretary, the one and only Paula Rawding, who said in so many words, Tip’s not dating anyone, would it be okay if he called you?   Probably bursting out of her seams but oh so cool, Molly said, That would be fine.   Well, the rest is history and she is now Mrs. Molly Melinda Rawding.   I’ve got one thing to say.   Thank you Paula!

          So ten days before her wedding, Molly drives 500 miles north, like all good York Rothermels do, in a mad rush from Virginia to Maine in ten hours, including a stop at her grandmother’s.  Tip, in the human resources department at Home Depot, will come a week later.   Once Hannah comes home from cutting hair at Durgin Pines Nursing Home in Kittery, ME in these pre-wedding evenings, we are on the deck of our one time B and B having alone time with her.  Molly, for now and maybe for a long time, is just where she should be.  We learn of her new job in Annandale, VA, her thoughts about having kids (yes!), and the details of the wedding, like where the sound system will come from when it is realized the reception venue has none.  (Solution – A friend of Tip’s sister Bev came through.)

          As 3P approaches on their wedding day, the groomsmen assemble up front.  Tip, who has been hidden away so he won’t see Molly, stands in the front as the eight bridesmaids and nephew ring bearer each slowly walk down the aisle of First Parish Church in York, Maine.  Molly and I are hidden so no one can see the bride through the windows in the door to the sanctuary.  Then the doors open and everyone is looking at us.  Well, let’s get real, at her.  Truly it is all about Molly. 

          In the Congregational Church, the minister does not ask, Who gives this woman in marriage?   What she does is have the father of the bride kiss the bride on the cheek, proudly and emphatically shake hands with the groom (at this point Tip free-lances by giving me a bear hug), and then I take the couple’s hands and put them together as one.  How cool is that.  I then walk to my spot next to Hannah and my mother in the front row left.  

          Tip reads the vows he wrote first.  On this most wonderful day before our special friends and amazing family, I, Joseph Tipton Rawding, do take you Molly Rothermel as my wife in Friendship and Love. And then he can say no more.  It’s got to be 20 seconds that he stands there composing himself.  No one doubts his love for Molly at this moment.  He eventually has the big ending.  Thank you also for being My Best Friend and Companion and I Promise to do my best to be yours. I love you and always will, My Love.   The guy is a poet to boot.   Then Molly begins Tip, you are my best friend and my greatest love.  She chokes up and pauses, too.  If this ain’t love, I don’t know what it is.  I sit in the first row and think that I’ve been there myself with those very same feelings about Hannah, Molly’s Mom. 

Two post scripts.   Our one time dental hygienist had a poster on the celling of the treatment room which listed twenty ways to happiness.   Number one on the list.  Choose your spouse wisely.  95% of your happiness depends on that one decision.   Amen.

At the rehearsal dinner lasagna cookout the night before, a woman older than I am asked, How does it feel to be losing a daughter?   That’s so not the way I feel.  I feel we have Tip -and his entire family- joining ours. 

Molly and Tip were married on July 3, 2011.

Dan Chokes Up at his Dad’s Memorial Service

Out of nowhere it just happens.  In front of 200 or so people at the Chapel at Cedar Crest Retirement Living Complex, I am eulogizing my father when I can say no more.  Words just won’t come out.  Having just mentioned my wife Hannah, I choke up.  I pause, look about the audience, and interestingly don’t feel distressed or embarrassed.  Must be my age.  I’d be freaking out if I were in my 20s.  Usually, I am so self-conscious and wondering what everyone else is thinking.  Not today.  This time I just wait, and then maybe 5-10 seconds later I am good to go.

In the two weeks since Dad died peacefully at the age of 94 in his and Mom’s apartment, I have been filled with his life and death.  Till sixty-three, I still had both parents, alive and well, in my life.  I was there the night he died.  The hospice nurse came quickly that late evening to confirm his death, as did the funeral director who was in charge of transporting his donated body to the Columbia University Medical Center.  It was a blessing that he went peacefully and quickly.  A blessing for him and a blessing for us, his family.

Then it happened again as I was preparing for my big eulogy finish.   … He (Dad) lives on in me and my siblings, Patty and Dick, our spouses, Hannah, Barbara, and Glenn, and our children, Molly and Tip, Robyn, Will, Jon and Lauren, Brian and Amy, Kara, Tara, and Anna.  We are the evidence that he lived a good and successful life.

I get to the Molly (our daughter) and Tip (her now husband) part (see above) and choking up sneaks up and grabs me again.  Again, no words come out.   I can’t go on.  I pause.  I look around.  And again I wait.  Fact is, I feel a calmness.  I know what is happening and I just wait.  I see the pausing as a good thing.  In a few seconds, I am okay to finish. 

At seismic events like this one, being emotional is no better than being unemotional.  We each are wired differently and our reactions to such charged moments in our lives are neither good nor bad.  They just are; each of us mourns and grieves and celebrates in our distinctively unique way.  My wife Hannah is emotional in a good way.  Me?  Less so, but I have my moments, as I do today.  Today I notice the emotion, let it stir within me, and let it come out the other side, able to continue my eulogy.  No matter how we all react, our Mom needs us all even more so from this day forward.

Choking up today reminds me of times in the past when I publicly read from my book, Sweet Dreams, Robyn, narrative poetry about our family dealing with our daughter and sister Robyn’s childhood leukemia.  Even though the events of those days happened 25 years ago and Robyn is now a healthy 29 year old, I can’t get through a reading without reliving those times and choking up.  Seeds of my emotions lie dormant until they remind me of what a powerful time that was in my life.

By the way, if you do have not have your own autographed copy of Sweet Dreams, Robyn (70 pages, paperback), email me a mailing address and Hannah and I will be most pleased to send you an autographed copy as a gift.   Truly, we’d love to share our family love story with you. 

(Dad died peacefully May 8, 2011)

Dan and Hannah Hike in Sundance, Utah and Encounter the Robert Redford

Another Sunday on vacation and another Congregational Church.  This time we rise early to see what’s happening in the Provo, UT church; Provo, the home of Brigham Young University.  To immerse ourselves in the local community on vacation, we find a Congregational church and stay for coffee hour.  With 24 other parishioners, Hannah and I settle into a front pew in a sanctuary for 200.  A spry elderly woman one pew up turns and says, I hope you’ll come to coffee hour.   It makes all the difference that she reaches out. 

East of Provo, we take the Provo Canyon Road (Route 189) along the meandering Provo River.  We take a left onto the Aspen Scenic Highway (Route 92) some seven miles from town, climbing the canyon road which in places is just inches from the rushing stream below.  At no more than 20 mph, we head towards Mount Timpanogos, past Sundance and Aspen Grove (A BYU family camping area) to the state park ranger station.  In mid-June this year, the road over Mt. Timpagnogos is closed due to the snowpack.  Paying six bucks, we are warned that snows will impede our hiking.  Immediately after parking, we suit up with fanny packs of trail mix and water, floppy hat for Dan, and head to Stewart Falls, some two miles away.  Immediately we discover that a mini-avalanche has covered the trail.  Sixty foot pine trees have been toppled and are strewn about as we step over and under serious trunks in this heavily forested part of the trail.

Hiking a meandering trail through pine forests, which is as much downhill as up, we spot a 100 yard snowfield that adds to the excitement of our last day of vacation.  We slip and slide across the snowfield helping others who pass in the opposite direction.  One young woman said to me, I need your hand.  We connect as a community of hikers.  Today we are again aware that we are not alone and didn’t get to where we are by ourselves.  A popular family hike on this Sunday, Stewart Falls gives us many opportunities to interact with others.  Not 45 minutes after we start, we arrive at the soaring falls, majestically falling to the snowfield below.  We learn that the snowfields can be treacherous as melting waters flow beneath them and undercut the integrity of the snowfield. 

Once back, we have hiked a mere 90 minutes, which leaves us 90 minutes short of our goal of three hours of hiking.  We look to Mount Timpanogos.  Wide and welcoming at the start, the trail up Mt. Timpanogos has us quickly sidestepping a boot-soaking impromptu steam and sloshing over mushy snowfields.  With another snowfield in our sights, we bail out and turn back after 25 minutes of hiking.  Hiking in snow is akin to hiking in sand.  We step and slide, two steps forward one step back.  It’s joyless, unless you are training for the Olympics or some insane ultra-marathon.  We side saddle through the snowfields where we see a family “ski” down the snowpack in their boots. 

Pleased and satisfied, we drive down the canyon drive and stop at Sundance to see what it’s all about.  (http://sundanceresort-px.rtrk.com/).   As we stroll through the grounds, I spot the Big Guy.  That’s right – the Sundance Kid, Johnny Hooker from The Sting.  He’s literally sitting twenty-five feet away being interviewed outside a screening room in this elegant campus for film folk.  Star struck, I can’t wait to tell someone.  Three women in their fifties approach.  I act so cool and say, Have you seen who’s here?  They look and scream and clap their hands together.  We are five teenagers.  Walking outside, I don’t want to intrude on his privacy or his time but do stare in that trying-not-to-stare way.

Pay dirt.  Once home I immediately get Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) at the York Public Library.  Yes, it was released during Dan and Hannah’s senior year of college.   Initially the screenplay was titled, the Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy, but with Paul Newman the bigger name and playing the part of Butch, the title was reversed.  Initially, Steve McQueen was wanted for the Sundance role, but he and Newman couldn’t agree on who would get top billing.  Let me tell you, the movie is timeless.  While Paul Newman and Robert Redford are handsome guys, Katherine Ross is drop dead gorgeous.  She, riding on the bike with Newman to the Academy Award winning tune of Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head by B.J. Thomas, is the best. 

Now a Robert Redford film buff, I was recently taken by Redford’s An Unfinished Life (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0350261/), which is worth running to your local library to get.

Stewart Falls Hike – A family hike of less than two hours.  As always when hiking, know thyself, thy limits, and the conditions.  Be prepared.

Dan and Hannah Venture to the Great Salt Lake, Utah to hike on Antelope Island

Outside of Salt Lake City lies Antelope Island, an undiscovered hiking jewel.  Having been through Salt Lake City two hundred times, well maybe ten, we never knew it existed.  With water five times as salty as the ocean, the Great Salt Lake is 57 miles long and 28 miles wide.  Traveling a seven mile causeway from the mainland, which costs $9, we pay a small price for this easy access adventure.  Taking the meandering road to the top of a small rise in the landscape to the visitor center, we find a spry elderly gentleman who suggests Mt. Frary as a challenging hike.   My dear readers, ever heard of it?  Me neither.  Never.  It’s the macho hike of the island and it has Dan and Hannah written all over it. 

The road on the west side of the island winds along the salty shoreline to a paved access road to the Mt. Frary trailhead.  Though there is a 2100 foot elevation gain, it’s only three miles to the top or so we are told.  Promises of big horn sheep and buffalo intrigue us.  Midday temperatures in early June are in the 70s but will surely fall as we ascend the mountain top at 6,596 feet.  Immediately we are huffing and puffing at the start, thinking, This is not going to be a picnic.  The trail is rock strewn and we step carefully.  Thankfully every half mile there is an indication of how far we have traveled.  I love knowing how far we have come.  You, too?   It’s like keeping score, which guys obsess about on a daily basis.  We like a record of our achievements.  Oh, we can be so shallow.  Busting our butts, we take the first half mile in 13 minutes as the trail becomes mostly dirt through fields of grasses.  Dressed in tee shirts and shorts we take long sleeve tee shirts for the possibly windy summit.                                                                                                                                               

Far in the distance we see a buffalo.  It’s fine.  Since Hannah’s brother Doug once had a buffalo farm, we are not awed or even moved.  In fact, we are quite blasé.  The trail winds through fields and is challenging but not exhausting.  We soon see the radio tower and three mile turn around point.  Alas, we have been deceived.  I know that is an inflammatory verb, but what we have is a faux peak, even though the marker says we are three miles from the trailhead.  It’s not the top.  The peak is in the distance, maybe a half mile away.  Bummed, we trek on.  The trail descends quickly as we must step carefully on the mountainside, and then it precipitously climbs.  We soon spot two twenty-something’s 25 feet above us wondering what they are going to do to get down this steep slope.  I crack, You must be the mountain goats we were promised.  They smile and start inching their way down what seemed to be a 70% incline.  I reach for the girl’s hand and she extends hers to mine as did her boyfriend.  Amazing what a connection can be made by the human touch, even when so brief.  We’re not alone.  Someone is there for us.  Our climb up was just as perilous, as we are grabbing rocks and dirt and skirting the edge of a cliff walk (knowing all the time we have to go back this way).

Atop, we have the classic 360 view of the Great Salt Lake.  With surprisingly little wind and pleasantly warm, it is only the no-see ‘ems that are a problem.  Knowing the inevitable hike down awaits, we begin our descent after ten minutes with Hannah in the lead.  Part billy she-goat, Hannah soon is sliding on her butt to negotiate the steep slopes.  Inspired, I do the same.  And then she starts going backwards on the 80 degree pitch.  I side saddle and at times go backward to descend this treacherous cliff mountainside.   Just having given up our group health insurance from my job at the U of New England, I start wondering what is in the fine print of our private pay health insurance that we just started this month.  A $10,000 deductible for each of us is not comforting.

Once back at the radio tower of the faux peak, we descend as if strolling in the park.  On the way down we see two hikers in the distance covered with what it turns out to be are motel towels.   Once we meet them, we learn that this father and son had no idea how little shade they would encounter on this basically treeless mountain.   Unprepared, they willingly accept our trail mix and water.  We are within 40 minutes of the trailhead and feel just so pleased to be able to share.    

Not wanting to leave the island before we dip our feet in the Great Salt Lake itself, we drive to the beach.  The parking area is just 400 yards from the water’s edge.   The walk to the water is on pebbly sand and certainly requires footwear.  Once there, we find the early June water warm.  Wading for 500 yards, we find the water never rises above our knees.  The walking is slow going as sand fleas swarm at our feet but not so much to be a nuisance.  Tasting the water, I find it tastes like the salt water drink I would make when I have a really bad sore throat and then I put extra salt in.   It has a medicinal taste to it.    

Not 30 miles from downtown Salt Lake City, this is a hiking oasis.   Don’t miss the opportunity. Mt. Frary Hike – Challenging, even perilous near the top, but most satisfying.   More than 20 people were on this hike this Saturday in June.  The connections with others are plentiful.  As always when hiking, know thyself, thy limits, and the conditions.  Be prepared.