Peggy and I met in youth choir at church. Even though we went to the same high school, I was a year older and we were in different activities.

When I say “youth choir” it probably evokes an image in your mind. That image in your head is wholly insufficient to understand what I am talking about.

I was fifteen when I moved to the Dallas area, and I attended the Methodist church in the town where I went to school. It was a nice-sized church with plenty of activities and opportunities. I sang with the choir there which had about forty members.

At Christmas, a close friend from school invited me to the Christmas Concert at his Baptist church. The first group that sang had about 100 members, but they looked very young to me. When I looked at the program I discovered this was the Junior High choir. After they sang, the youth choir came on stage with about 150 members. I was blown away by two things — the sound that came out of that group and how good the girls looked! We had a few good-looking girls at the Methodist church, but, man…

When we came back to school after Christmas I joined the youth choir at the Baptist church.

Every summer the choir went on a choir tour and then every other summer the choir tour was combined with a mission trip. My first year we did a choir tour through the southeast with about 125 singers. The next summer was a mission trip summer, so when we traveled in 1980 we had more than 200 people on the trip with us. For seventeen days. Driving from Dallas to New York and back. Three charter buses and four 15-passenger vans full of people as well as equipment trucks and other vehicles. It was quite an amazing sight when we would roll up to a church where we were singing and see the looks on the faces of the church members there to greet us.

This is the trip when Peggy and I got to know each other and after which we began dating. I was seventeen and she was sixteen. We have spent the rest of our lives together since that incredible start.

So, think of this happening over a span of fifteen or so years. The youth choir fluctuated between 100 and 175 people as different classes graduated and moved on, but the tours continued uninterrupted.

Last night Peggy and I attended a reunion of the people that went on those trips in the 70s and 80s. We had such a great time seeing friends we have not gotten to see nearly often enough since we left Dallas almost twenty years ago. Getting back together made it seem as though no time had passed — at least until we look at the pictures!

What an incredible gift it was to be part of these events as we were growing up! And how do you ever thank the adults that gave up their vacation time to go along and make it possible for us to go? Seventeen days in a bus with a bunch of teenagers? For vacation?! It was an amazing sacrifice that I never fully appreciated when we were kids. I hope I was able to adequately convey my appreciation last night to the ones who are still with us and were in attendance.

I know that we will never see some of these people again — we even lost one of the organizers of the event during the preparations. It is just a reality of getting older. But we got to see so many last night and relive some wonderful memories. We will relive them again today on the four-hour drive back home to Katy.

Such a privilege…

It is 278 miles from our house in Katy to the apartment in the memory care facility where Peggy’s Mom lives in the Dallas area. Peggy drives it at least twice each month to go check on her mother. Sometimes I go with her and sometimes I stay in Katy and take care of the animals.

Peggy is the youngest child in her family. Unfortunately, her sister lives in Tucson and her brother lives in Seattle, so Peggy is the closest family member by a long shot. Fortunately, she loves her Mama and is happy to be the one taking care of her. But a thousand miles a month going back and forth is tough.

The emotional toll is the toughest. Because Mary has Alzheimer’s, she doesn’t understand why she is no longer living in her home of nearly fifty years. On every trip Peggy has to explain to her mother that she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and watch her mother react to the news like she is hearing it for the first time. I honestly don’t know how Peggy does it.

Peggy and her mother have always been very close. Peggy was the later-in-life blessing that her parents never knew they needed until she arrived. She and her mom were more like friends than mother-daughter — sometimes that is not the healthiest of relationships — so for Peggy, this journey is impacting her in more than just the traditional way.

This is the part of getting older they don’t tell you about. But Peggy is tough. And she loves her Mama.

I asked Peggy a couple of weeks ago if she was getting tired of the driving. Of course she is, but that was not her answer. She said she hasn’t even begun to approach how far her mother went for her.

That’s why I love her.

Today was a truly interesting day. Peggy and I got a new printer recently, and it includes a scanner. I have never been particularly interested in having a scanner, so it has taken me a while to warm up to the idea.

It was cold this morning when I got out of bed, so I waited to walk. Peggy was asleep. I didn’t want to turn on the television and wake her up, so I was looking for something to do. I was looking in a cabinet in our dining room for something totally unrelated when a folder full of photographs fell out of the cabinet. As I was picking them up to put away I noticed that some of them were showing wear on the edges (perhaps from falling on the floor repeatedly) and that the colors on some were beginning to fade. This discovery led me to open the other boxes and envelopes of pictures and notice the same thing.

In the same cabinet lives the aforementioned printer/scanner combo. An idea sprang to mind. If I am honest, that idea was “Peggy really needs to scan all of these pictures so that we can have them on the computer.” However, since she was asleep I decided to mess with it a little bit. You know, it would help me give her instructions later about what I wanted done.

Three hours later Peggy walks in with a cup of coffee and I am elbows deep in photographs. It took me a few tries to figure out the scanner, but after that I was just plowing through pictures. I could have gone faster but each one made me pause and remember when it was taken and what was happening at the time. School pictures, sports team pictures, church directory pictures, everything had been stuck in this cabinet. Then I found a box that contained old snapshots. The memories were running rampant while I was working.

Peggy and I went and did all the things we do on Saturday in the spring. After running all of our errands and going out to lunch, I was itching to get back to the photographs. It’s not an obsession, but it is an objective now. After I have finished the “loose” pictures, I will get to work on scanning the ones in albums, like our wedding pictures. That’s a little more delicate work because they have been stuck in that album for more than twenty-five years.

We finished our day doing our favorite thing in the world — sitting on the back porch with a fire, listening to music and talking. After looking at memories all day long there was a lot to talk about, and the music brings back even more memories.

Fortunately, there was a lot of fuel in the yard to keep the fire burning. We used every bit of it.

My wife is a gambler.

It’s not a problem if you win, is it?

Peggy likes to play slot machines. There are no legal slot machines in Texas, so we make the three-hour drive to Lake Charles and go to L’Auberge du Lac. Sometimes we stay here on our way back and forth to Baton Rouge to visit our son or to attend events at LSU. And she plays. For hours.

This trip we went to Dallas to spend Easter with Peggy’s mother. After visiting with her we made the drive to Lake Charles to spend a couple of days and allow Peggy to relax. The weather is nice so we will spend time in the pool and have several nice meals. Then after dinner she will play penny slots while I entertain myself.

Here’s the thing. “Penny” slots aren’t. She is typically playing two dollars a pull. And on most spins she wins something, usually something less than two dollars. But every so often she wins more. So she keeps playing.

The casino has a rewards program. They give you a point for every $5 you bet while you are playing slots. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but if you sit there and keep playing you can accumulate some points. Peggy starts every night with $100. She plays until she gets tired or until she runs out of money.

In a year she has accumulated 15,000 points. Do the math — that means she has bet more than $75,000 this year. And because she has accumulated 15,000 points everything we do at the casino is free. The hotel rooms are free, the booze is free, and much of the food is free. Because she plays penny slots.

Sometimes she loses her $100. But usually she comes home with the same $100 she started with. Or more. And we stay at the hotel free.

I know there has to be a catch somewhere. But I haven’t found it. The hotel room would cost at least $300 for the weekend, but we get to stay here because, you know, she plays penny slots.

I have stopped trying to make the math work. I just stay in the pool.