Irene and Howard

I saw this picture of Irene and her husband Howard and snapped a picture with my phone.  Howard passed in 2001 so it was taken before that.  She’d made his shirt and her dress she said.  Irene grew up poor in a large family and hardly got to attend school.  One year she and her brother really only had one outfit fit to wear and they took turns going to school.  He wore it one day and she the next.  I can’t even imagine poverty at the level she endured.  When she was 15, he father found her a husband—Howard.  He was 25. She said she didn’t really know him and wanted to run away but there was no place to go.  She married him and said she did love him but not like the love she dreamed of as a girl.  They had 5 children.  Howard was a good loving husband, but Irene said she was never really happy because she did not chose her life.  She made the best of it.  

When we get old, as I am now, I realize we don’t feel different inside. We’re the same as we were when young in our thoughts and feelings.  It seems to me that Irene is still that young girl.  She is at the mercy of those around her.  When I take her a little gift she is so excited and so thankful. She said she believed that her father owed Howard money for a butane tank and if Irene became his wife he would not have to pay this debt.  Howard owned a farm and was a hard worker.  Her father probably thought he was doing a good thing.  I’ve always had choices.  I was allowed to decide my fate in life.  Still today Irene doesn’t  have a chance to choose.  I know there’s lots of people across the globe that feel the same.  It’s hard to even imagine.  I enjoy giving her gifts that make her smile.