I'm at All In right now, and I'm supposed to be doing homework, but I found myself reading through these stories from my sweet Mommom, missing her, and wishing I could plop down on the couch next to her and share whats going on in my life just like I did every day last year. But she's with Jesus now, signing, dancing, and praising him with every fiber of her being. She has been made whole again. She's free.
So here is one of my favorite stories from Mommom. This is the story of how she met and fell in love with Granddad.
I was working in Atlanta, and Fritz was going to Georgia
tech. The YMCA had dance classes for young people. He and his buddies would go,
and me and my friends would go. He was in the class before me, and the teacher said,
“You boys stay I need some boys to dance with the next group.” So they stayed in my class, and Fritz chose me for a partner. After a dance the teacher would
say “Change partners” and he would whisper in my ear “We’re not going to
change.” My friend Carolyn Taylor was from Atlanta and was not scared of
anything. I was just a little country girl scared of everything. We went to
Daytona Beach together and rented a room for a week. She could meet a boy and
go out with him that night but boy I wouldn’t! My mama taught me to be afraid
of boys because you never know what they’re going to do. The night I met Fritz,
he said we should go downstairs to the coke machine and get a coke. There was
no one else down there and when I came back Carolyn said “Oh Carrie, you didn’t
go downstairs by yourself with a boy?!” She just couldn’t believe I would do
that.
Fritz didn’t have a car so he got a taxi to come out to the
house to see me. So I said, “If we’re going to go somewhere I’ll drive out, you
don’t have to get a taxi to get me” so that’s what we did. The Varsity was
diagonally across from the boarding house where Fritz was staying. He had
already graduated and was doing graduate work. I thought I had really caught
something, you know. I found someone who had already finished college who was
still going to school.
When he first met me he told his friends “I’m going to marry
that girl.” They said “No you’re not! She’s from the mountains, you don’t know
that girl.” But he did.
He was working in Pensacola and would drive up to Georgia see me on
the weekend. I always felt so bad because he wouldn’t go see his mother.
Finally one day I said, “You have to go see her.” But he wouldn’t go without
taking me even tough I had no business going. I said ok, we’d go on a Saturday
and spend the day with her. I think that was the first time he ever brought a
girl home so Mother decided he must really like me if he took me home.
All my sisters just thought he was the greatest, you know.
I thought Fritz had the prettiest smile I had ever seen on a
man.
He was always such a gentleman. I guess that’s the thing
that attracted me to him more than anything. A lot of boys I dated I felt like
I had to push them off but I always felt very comfortable and safe with him.
The bridge in Atlanta that crosses 85 right there beside The Varsity. The first time he ever kissed me was right on that bridge. I thought, "I’ve never been kissed like that before! I must be in love." And I was.
Now, she stopped telling her story there, but there is so much more to this story. My grandpa asked her to marry him. She said no. She cried about it for days then changed her mind. We were talking about this one day, and she said something that's always made me laugh. She said, "Alyssa, I was young. You're young. You're a teenager. It's a teenagers right to change their mind about anything."
So, dear friends, if you're dating someone and they ask you to marry them and you say no, just know that it's your right to change your mind. I mean I'm pretty happy she changed her mind, because if she hadn't, I wouldn't be here.
