Randy Fitzgerald

I hated to confess to Barb the other day that I had torn one of her guest towels. I was drying my hands, and a finger just seemed to poke right through it.

            “No big deal,” she said. “Which one was it?”

            When I told her it was the pink one with the bFg monogram, she started to laugh.

            “No wonder it tore,” she said. “That towel is 48 years old.”

            It turned out that the towel I had torn was the last one left from a set that Barb’s Aunt Mattie had given us as a wedding present when we married in 1961. Mattie Morris worked at Miller & Rhoads here in Richmond, and she had gotten us this beautiful monogrammed set using Barb’s new married initials for the first time. The bath towels and washcloths had long ago bit the dust, but somehow this one guest towel had survived.

            Either we haven’t had a lot of guests over the years or Miller and Rhoads sold some amazing towels.  The edges are a little frayed and the towel’s a little thin, but imagine lasting and still being usable after all these years. It even still has the silk tag sewed on, faded and ragged, but one can make out a shield with an F on the side. Barb says she thinks that might mean Fieldcrest. I believe if that brand is still made, we should all go looking for some.

“Let’s put what’s left of it away,” Barb said, “in honor of five decades of service.”

But the tearing of the towel led us to sit down and consider whether any other of our wedding presents had survived for 48 years, 17 moves across four states and three countries, two kids and a heck of a lot of use.

What became clear instantly is that brides remember such things as gifts a lot better than grooms do. Barb could recount in great detail any number of presents, as well as who gave them to us, and I remembered exactly one thing: A decanter with a dancing couple in the bottom that my best friend and fraternity brother had given us. And that we still have, too, although it was overwound at some point so the couple no longer dance and the music no longer plays, but they’re still there together.

Barb looked under a kitchen counter, way in the back, and brought forth a few pieces of old silver, and then found elsewhere a big china bowl and a frying pan—not much to show from so many gifts—and lord knows how that last item escaped being burned up by me over the years.

“Maybe we should write the people who gave us those things another thank-you note,” I suggested. “Wouldn’t they be amazed to know we still have them?”

Forty-eight years after that 1961 wedding, Barb cringed. “There’s one thank-you note I never did write,” she remembered, “and I still feel bad about it.” It turned out that shortly before our marriage, a package had arrived at her parents’ home in Charlottesville—that time, too, from Miller & Rhoads in Richmond.  A card inside let her know it was a gift from two sisters who had been good friends of hers at Longwood.

Everything else in the box was smithereens.

Clearly the gift had been crystal of some sort, but it was so finely broken that there wasn’t a handle or a neck or top or bottom that could be recognized at all. “It might have been a vase,” she said the other day, “or a pitcher or two wine glasses—there was just nothing identifiable.”

Being 19 years old and not very worldly, Barb had no idea how to respond to that. She felt bad about saying, “I got your present, but it was in shards. Send me another one.”  And she couldn’t write and say, “Thanks for the …” because she had no idea what she was thanking them for. It didn’t occur to her to contact Miller & Rhoads. So she did nothing and has always regretted it—and really never had any further contact with her old friends.

So Beverly and Diane, if you’re out there somewhere, know that your good thoughts and your gift, smithereens or not, were appreciated.

All these wedding stories led to our getting out our wedding album, which we hadn’t looked at in years, and that was actually a little emotional. All four of our parents are gone, but there they were, on our happiest of days, beaming at us. Barb teared up at the sight of her mother straightening her veil. One of the bridesmaids is gone, too—but Barb is still in close touch with every one of the others. My groomsmen were good choices, too.

Most of all, we were happy to know that this very young boy and girl have found their way through almost a half-century to a place where they are together and still in love.

I do believe the marriage is going to outlast even the towel.