Though I’m now in my early 40s, it’s hard for me to imagine that my parents have been together even longer than I’ve been living. However, that is truly logical seeing that I wouldn’t even be here if they had never met. 🙂 But what a life they’ve led, one that I and my siblings have got to share with them. And what a family my parents created. I’m the baby of the family but in the first 7 years and three months of their marriage before I arrived, they first had a boy, then a girl, then another boy to be topped off by me, the second daughter, to create the perfectly, evenly matched family. And to top it off, each one of us was given a name beginning with the same letter of my Dad’s given name, E. Not to be confusing to all of you who are my followers who know me as Lynndee, Lynndee is the nickname my hubby gave me because I totally hate my given name. You’d most likely understand that if I told you what it is, which I totally refuse to do. Sorry. 🙂

Both my parents were born right after the end of WW II, thus avoiding that chaotic time in my country’s history. Dad was born in 1946, the year the Philippines was officially recognized as an independent nation, ending 48 years of being under American rule, and then Japanese occupation, after the Spanish American War of 1898 which led to my country being ceded to the U.S. as a result of their victory. They lived through the nascent democratic birth of a new government which was interrupted by the election Ferdinand Marcos to president in 1965 which turned into a dictatorship only to be ended by the 1986 People Power Revolution which I got to experience as a budding preteen.

But Dad’s journey to the future began with him becoming a carpenter apprentice, then becoming a foreman for his employer’s business. It was then that he decided to take all his experience and put it to his own use by becoming an independent contractor. Thus, he began his own business which I later on became involved in by being an office clerk, helping with all the computer and paperwork aspects of running his successful business. It was through his success as a that it was possible for him to send me and all my siblings to college without us having to work or borrow one penny to pay for our education. What an everlasting gift! Mom herself contributed to the family by running her own independent self-employment operations. And so it was that I learned by example the dedication needed to not only survive in this dog-eat-dog world but also the heartfelt commitment required to create a loving, self-sufficient family.

Here’s a family portrait painted for us by a friend of Dad.

Among the many quote I found commemorating wedding anniversaries, I found one that spoke to the idea of traveling to forever together as one entity which was spoken by Germaine de Staël, a French-Swiss woman of letters. Her words are as follows: “Love is the emblem of eternity, it confounds all notion of time, effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end”. And what better way to celebrate a Golden Anniversary than to dwell upon such beautiful words, in hopes of continuing on that journey to forever together, heading towards the next milestones of the Emerald Anniversary, the Diamond Anniversary to be followed by the Platinum Anniversary. So happy 50th, Mom and Dad! We love you!