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Today, August 4, is my parents’ 55th anniversary. They got married in a Hernando, Mississippi courthouse in 1956 after knowing each other for only 10 days. 55 years later, my dad writes this to his life-long partner:
Ode to My Wife Uva Nell Lassiter-Fortney
by Robert Fortney
A hammer and saw you cannot use
A shirt without buttons you avoid like the flu
For you a road map is shade
but as a Mother you take a back seat to none.
You care for your family and house like they are royalty.
Then you act like we deserve it.
Of course we don’t.
But MOTHERING is something you do.
You cook, clean, pet and soothe our hurts and fears away.
Most of all you love us one and all.
So you are already in the Mother’s Hall of Fame
and at age 76 you have not quit yet!
And as your partner through these years,
I count it an honor and privilege to grow old with you.
As it was in our vows,
“‘Til death do us part,”
I LOVE YOU UVA NELL,
Bob
row away from the rocks 