Dad and I had a moment today.  It started by me asking him if we could sit together with him telling any stories that came into his mind, and I would sit at my computer and write them down.  He said I knew all his stories.  I reminded him of questions I wish I had asked Mom about how her parents met or her dad's education (not sure she even knew these answers), and how Mom had lamented about not asking her dad more questions when he was alive.  Regrets.  The only way to keep regrets at bay is to anticipate them.  

Despite not wanting to talk while I typed, he answered my questions.  It began by him asking me how he and Mom met.  I told him that she always told the story of her in grade school saving a place for him in line after recess, but he always chose to stand by another girl.  Dad quickly refuted this story saying, "Yeah, Mom always said that, but I don't ever remember that." Then I recounted the story of when they really "first met."  Mom was a telephone operator in town, and Dad hollered up to the open telephone office window, "How does stuff work up there?"  Mom responded, "Why don't you come up and see," to which Dad said, "I gotta go home and wash my hair."  OUCH, Dad!  He didn't go home, and that night led to 62 years of marriage.  

Talking about their first meeting led Dad to reflect on how he was with his best friend Billy Klinkenborg, and that led me to asking him how old he was when he hollered up into that telephone office window.  He said he must've been 14 or 15 to which I responded that Mom would have been 9 or 10.  This led to a long discussion of ages and dates and whether this all happened before or after WW II or if he was on furlough.  He knew he wasn't on furlough because he spent all that time with his family.  If he was in the war from ages 18-20, and they got married when he was 21, it had to be when he returned from the war and Mom was 15.  Maybe my brain works differently, but for memories to truly make sense and embed, I have to connect people, places, and dates.  Maybe after 75 years the connections have disinegrated.  

Bringing up the war led Dad to talking about his experiences, both state side and overseas.  I always thought he drove a tank in Europe, but he said that was only in Basic Training at which time he discovered that small, cramped spaces were not for him.  We talked about how lucky he was to never see any fighting, the closest being when the Germans fired on his engineering company trying to build a bridge across the Rhine River to which they promptly dismantled the bridge and retreated.  I asked him again about the can of peaches because it is one of my favorite stories.  He doesn't remember how he got the peaches or why he felt the need to bring them to dinner, but he met a girl in England who invited him back to her house for dinner.  They opened the peaches but refused to eat any until Dad took a bite first.  He did add a detail to this story that I had never heard.  "She must have lived near our camp because I remember we walked up a hill together."  That was it.  A fleeting memory that had never surfaced until tonight.  

I said he was lucky that he spent most of his time getting shipped from Germany to England to France to the Philippines.  That sparked another untold memory of him cleaning the barracks rather than being out on maneuvers.  That led to talking about cleaning toilets and me learning to clean them by helping Mom clean the city park's restrooms while she cleaned the shelterhouses.  That led to him remembering all the hard work he put in when he worked for the town: replacing foot bridges after storms; running the snow plow and getting it stuck in a ditch when the snow was so deep he couldn't discern the road.  

We talked about the work he did as a boy on the many farms his parents rented.  That somehow led to talking about milking cows, which led to him explaining how they would turn the cream separator.  I did not understand what he meant by all the plates that helped separate it so I found a YouTube video.  He was thrilled to watch, and together we learned those plates were actually cones that stacked one on top of the other.  I was happy 2020 technology could remind him of 1935 events.  

For not wanting to talk while I typed, he shared a lot of memories.  Granted I was not typing whle he talked, which is probably why we had a moment.