My grandma Hazel always told me that big, life-changing events come in threes. Like most things she said, I took that with a grain of salt. After all, this was the same woman who spent years insisting World War II was the only thing standing between her and Paul Newman, little nuisance that it was. For years we heard about the forbidden romance between Grandma Hazel and the young Newman, who Grandma told us was working as a waiter at the lodge where her family stayed on a trip to Yellowstone when she was seventeen. There were instant sparks when he took her order for a turkey club sandwich with potato salad, and sweet nothings whispered during midnight strolls near Crystal Falls. She would sneak out after her little sister, my great-aunt Clara, went to sleep, and she and Paul would hold hands and steal innocent kisses, and she would stare into those dazzling blue eyes under a clear, full moon.
When she and her family returned to their home in Adelaide Springs, Colorado, Paul promised to write. And write he did . . . until he enlisted. She never heard from him again, and soon she met my grandfather, who ended up being the great love of her life for more than sixty years.
But that didn’t stop us from jokingly referring to Newman as Grandpa Paul every time Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came on TV. My grandfather would even pretend to be jealous and say things like, “Stay away from my woman, Blue Eyes.”
It wasn’t until Grandma Hazel was in her final weeks of life, and Grandpa Clarence had been gone for a few years, that she looked up from her crossword puzzle one day and said, “Pete Newman. That was his name. Not Paul.”
So, yeah . . . What came out of my grandmother’s mouth always needed to be verified. But the “life-changing events come in threes” thing had always checked out. Jobs were lost on the same day friends passed away and homes burned down. Babies were born hours before engagements were announced and college scholarships were received. Those things wouldn’t necessarily all happen to the same person, of course, but in a person’s “circle of influence,” as Grandma Hazel liked to call it. Within a community of friends and family.
So maybe it was superstitious hooey, but . . . yeah. I was just a little bit nervous that someone else’s life was going to change on September 6. That morning, my stepmother, Melinda, had received the call she and my dad had been waiting for, finally putting a name to the symptoms she had been dealing with for months. Parkinson’s. The diagnosis wasn’t a surprise. In fact, having some answers had generated a fair amount of relief, even if we’d been hoping against hope for a more hope-filled answer.
And then two of my closest friends got married that afternoon. Although Brynn and Sebastian’s wedding had been on the books for months.
Still. That was two biggies in the life-change column.
But by the time Brynn and Sebastian said, “I do,” everyone was happy and having a great time, and I was so focused on the love and light on my friends’ faces that I’d forgotten to be on the lookout for number three.