Bread and Butter

Young couples used to say "Bread and Butter" if separated by an obstacle when walking together, to keep something from coming between them. This is based on the difficulty of separating butter from bread once spread. 

My mother, Ruth, still has an old-fashioned beaded bag my father, Clovis, gave her for high school graduation, and I'm struck by how like her it is: small, pretty, many colorful pieces forming the whole, smooth to the touch, easy to love. I imagine my father saw this instantly. They were fourteen years old when they met, and neither time nor distance ever separated them in spirit.

Ruth's father, Lake Starkey, was a physician, her mother, Mary Bosworth Starkey, a descendant of early English settlers. Clovis Ritter was the rough-cut son of immigrant German stock—his mother, Ida, a short, fat, bossy sort and his father, C.H., a tall, skinny, quiet man, her Jack Sprat counterpart.

I don't know my maternal grandparents' view of this bright,  farm-grown young man, because they died in a car crash before I was born. I can guess they hoped their middle daughter would find a better catch if they moved her away from La Feria, Texas—population 1,594.

Ruth tried to follow her parents' wish that she go to college in Chicago, where her aunt and uncle lived. Once there, however, she schemed to move closer to Texas A & M, where Clovis was studying agriculture. She went to three different colleges in as many years and finally—after her third year away—they were married, with fifty dollars between them.

My father, enforcer of his own rules, scared me when I was growing up. Determined to have his way, he'd paint himself into a corner where to say yes would be to give in, a loss of face he couldn't tolerate.

Mom, though, saw through his tough exterior, and would act as go-between—babying me without challenging his decisions. She has never liked conflict. Even now, at age 97, when we're out together if I walk on the other side of a post in the sidewalk she'll say, "Bread and Butter!"

My parents were not without arguments, however.

I wear the same size shoe as Mom, and on one visit I brought her a pair of discount store stilettos, just for fun. She pranced around in them for Dad, expecting something flirty, I guess. Instead he gave her a dour look and said, "You're not going anywhere with me in those shoes."

Mom wept. I was furious. When she asked me what she could do, I said "LEAVE the son-of-a-bitch!"

That was out of the question, of course. Until he died at age 69, when I was visiting and came into a room where they were sitting, I'd find them whispering, Mom on Dad's lap, her arm protectively around him.