The Anniversary Party

The Anniversary Party

By 1947, my grandfather had returned from World War II and married a French girl he had met while going to college at Emory University in Atlanta. This was my grandmother. He looks at her sometimes in their kitchen when we are down to visit and loudly claims to have known from the moment he saw her that she would be the woman he'd marry. My grandmother Geva, short for the lovely Genevieve, smiles and shakes her head and takes a coconut cake into the other room while she remembers the hot day in Georgia when she lost her French name - Bertat. Bertat, Bertat. That name - incredibly beautiful, with the little lilt at the end lifting it up. She remembers becoming "Mrs. Alexander" and then incorporating the name when they started the "ALEXANDER'S OFFICE SUPPLIES" stores in Milledgeville, Macon, and Dublin, Georgia, where they live. And she puts the coconut cake down where it goes, where it will sit to be nibbled at in times of boredom by the men she made it for, and she thinks on where she is now - fifty years she's been married to him. Their stores are all three going strong, and she is still working at the Dublin branch every day, including today, her 50th wedding anniversary. She is still as sharp as the ten thousand tacks she ordered for Macon this morning.

We are down to visit and to celebrate this anniversary, this fairly amazing accomplishment of my grandparents. Their marriage has been full of love, and today their house is full of children and grandchildren. I am the oldest and long ago was dubbed "#1 Grandson" by my grandfather. My cousin Chris, a year younger than me, is "#2," my younger brother is "#3," and Chris's brother Scott is "#4." It's hardly a creative labeling system, but it works well when yelled from across the house if one of the dogs is bothering him or if anyone comes to the door. Chris has had a hard life and has made the lives of those around him hard as well. He is not in Dublin right now - he is in South Carolina at a military school, but he probably won't stay there long.

He was kicked out of one school for breaking into their computer system and messing with their records. He is fairly a genius with anything mechanical or technological, the exact opposite of me and my brother, who throw up our hands like the prissy city-boys we are when Chris talks about taking apart hard drives or fixing cars.