Making a go of it

I'll admit, I was kind of casting about for something to write today. I can't explain why I chose this, except that it's a picture more people should see, and a story more people should know.

This photo must have been taken in 1957 or 1958. The young couple on the right -- my husband's parents, as it happens -- had eloped from their home in Montana when they were only eighteen. The young man had joined the Navy. They were living in San Francisco. The young man's very cultured and proper mother was ostensibly trying to accept her only son's choice of a bride, the beautiful, petite girl from the wrong side of the tracks with the difficult family background. You can see it in this photo. (Come closer, mom. No, son, I'm staying where I am, but I'll smile for the camera.)

I don't know whether the young couple had already lost their first baby, a preemie, or whether he was on the way. (If that baby were born today, he would almost certainly be able to survive. Amazing.) Either way, they still had so much ahead of them. College and graduate school, five living children and a move to Alaska. Ups and downs, battles.

But on this day the flowers were blooming in San Francisco and the clean white linens were blowing in the sea breeze. They were going to make a go of it.