The decades have provided annual markers for a marriage and a life.
Photo Above: Elaine and Bruce celebrate the Christmas of 2014 with each other and their family.
Photo by Bruce Ingram | Photo styling by Janette Spencer.
The worst—and darkest—Christmas for me was the one in 1974. I had graduated from Roanoke College that spring and unable to find a job as a high school English teacher, had spent the fall and winter working as a janitor at a McDonald’s in Roanoke, Virginia. I earned $2.10 an hour, a princely nickel more than most hourly workers, because of the arduous nature of the position. When hired, my first assigned task was to climb into the eatery’s dumpster and “hop it down.” It’s “too full” my supervisor explained.
For Christmas Day that year, my boss offered me “20 dollars cash, tax free” if I went to another Roanoke McDonald’s and cleaned up the mountains of grease that had accumulated under the grill—a task he estimated would take no more than four hours but actually took six. My Grandmother Margarette, who lived nearby, had offered to launder and starch my white McDonalds’ shirt beforehand so I “would look sharp.” A few minutes after crawling under the grill, grease had sullied my shirt and soul.
That ill-begotten day, I thought constantly of Elaine Adams, a Clifton Forge, Virginia, girl I had met that summer while working at nearby Camp Easter Seal. I had fallen hopelessly in love with Elaine, but had been too shy to tell her how I felt or even strike up a conversation. The nadir of my day at McDonald’s came when a customer came to the entrance and demanded service. He was not satisfied with my response that I was only a janitor and wasn’t allowed to serve meals.
Miracles can happen, though, for three years later, I reveled in my best Christmas ever—the first one which Elaine and I spent as an engaged couple. Longtime readers of this column already know the backstory. How Elaine rejected me the first five times I asked for a date, finally, deigning to go out with me when I asked for a sixth time. How, amazingly, on our fifth date, she confessed that she was in love with me. How I promptly asked her to marry me, which she consented to do. And, how we’ve been euphorically happy for 46 years as husband and wife.
Christmas Eve of 1977, we had lunch with my parents and dinner with hers. But it was Christmas Day that proved most special to us. Elaine came down early so that we could eat breakfast and open presents together and revel in our being a couple on Christmas morning for the first time. That day all our dreams seemed possible. Of our both becoming school teachers, of having children, of living in a nice house with land in these mountains and of my becoming a professional writer.
Without a doubt, the first few years were difficult financially. Our starter house was impossibly small for the two of us and became even more so when Sarah and Mark were born. Five years into our marriage, we discovered that our combined teaching salaries would not enable us to send our kids to college. That revelation caused us to decide that it was time for me to try to become a writer…which like everything else at that time for us (except the love we shared for each other) proved to be a struggle.
But eventually the stories, and later the books, began to sell. Years and decades passed and Christmases came and went… all wonderful because of Elaine. We built the home of our dreams on 38 acres in Botetourt County, Virginia. Sarah, her husband and their two children live in another house on the land. And Mark lives just a few miles away on another of our rural properties in these mountains. Thanks, sweetheart, for the love and life you have given me.
The story above first appeared in our November / December 2024 issue.
