I’m writing this on August 21st, my father’s birthday. Norman Busk was born in 1916. My mother, Evelyn Anderson, was born two years earlier on August 30. They were married on August 24. That means that, growing up, the last week and a half of August was always time get ready for school and also a time of celebration.

My mother, Evie, often merits mention in these essays because, as a full-time homemaker, she was a constant presence in our lives. Our father worked! At their 50th Wedding Anniversary party, our eldest sister, Janice, gave a talk, saying, in effect, that our father “couldn’t hold a job” and then proceeded to enumerate them all: farmer, underground miner, truck driver, carpenter, contractor, and finally life insurance agent. That one lasted for decades. By the way, when he finally retired from that, my mother told him, “You’re retiring? I’m retiring. The kitchen is closed!” She made that stick, too. From then on, they ate out.

My father grew up in a totally dysfunctional family. For ten years while he and his two brothers were growing up, they had to carry messages back and forth between their parents because Grandpa and Grandma Busk weren’t speaking to each other. Why? Well, let’s see. My father was in his seventies when he learned he had a half-sister who was five years younger than he was. Her mother’s parents had been friends of the Busks and lived nearby. When their unmarried daughter turned up pregnant, they upped stakes and moved to California. I suspect that “catch colt child,” as my mother would have called her, was one of the causes of that long-standing feud in the Busk household. And then there’s the whole issue of Grandpa Busk being a pedophile. (Don’t ask me how I know.)

So that’s my father’s family of origin, growing up near Marvin, South Dakota. At age eighteen, he went to the town of Summit, ten miles away, where he encountered a NORMAL family in the form of the Andersons—A.G. (Andrew Gottfried) and Celia, along with their six kids, five daughters and a son. As soon as my father encountered normal, he grabbed hold of it and held on for dear life.

According to Grandpa Anderson, my father originally came to Summit courting my mother’s younger sister, Helen. Grandpa Anderson said, “I told him, Norman, in this house we eat the old bread first,” and that’s how Norman ended up with Evie rather than my aunt Toots.

Evie was two years older than my dad. She didn’t want to be labeled a cradle robber and refused to marry him while he was still a teenager. He turned 20 on August 21,1936, they married on August 24, and she turned 22 on August 30. They spent the next 68 years together.

Norman Busk was smart. He could do math in his head like nobody’s business. For years we won movie passes once a month on an early morning radio show called Whiz Quiz. I’d dial all but one of the numbers before the announcer even asked the question. Once he did, my father would supply the answer, and I’d let that last number go. The question from that which I still remember is, “How do eight eights equal a thousand?” “That’s easy,” my dad said. “Eight hundred and eighty-eight, plus eighty-eight, plus eight, plus eight, plus eight.” With those words that month’s movie passes were in the bag.”

Since math was so easy for him, he couldn’t understand why I was totally baffled by the multiplication tables. I remember several tearful sessions at the kitchen table when I was in third grade. When I learned to drive, it was on a 1949 Plymouth with fluid drive, so using the clutch was somewhat optional. When that car went away, replaced by a much newer Valiant with zero fluid drive, using the clutch was suddenly mandatory. I remember driving around Bisbee with my father crouched on the passenger floor board, bodily moving my foot as required until I finally got the hang of it.

When it was time for me to go to college, my plan was to major in Journalism. I remember my dad telling me, “That’s a hard job for a woman, maybe you should be a teacher.” (He and the U of A’s Creative Writing Professor were on the same page there!) But when, in my forties, I began writing murder mysteries, my father was one hundred percent supportive.

And speaking of supportive, my parents knew my first husband was a problem the moment they met him. For the next eighteen years they held their tongues about that, but when I finally made up my mind to divorce the man, there they were helping me get the house ready to sell, with my dad up on the roof fixing the flashing in the middle of June in Phoenix.

My Dad told me once that A.G. Anderson was always more of a father to him than his own had been. I’m sure that’s true, and all seven of us kids benefited from Grandpa Anderson’s mentorship. He taught my father about family values, and that was priceless.

My parents were full partners in everything. When they traveled, my father was at the wheel with my mother in the co-pilot’s seat with the Rand McNally Road Atlas open on her lap. When they did carpentry work, they did it together. When their plan to remodel the house on Yuma Trail stalled out, my mother enlisted my younger brother, Arlan, home from kindergarten, to help her take down the block wall separating the living room from the sun porch. My dad came home that night, surveyed the debris field, and declared the remodel underway.

And so today’s blog is a celebration of Norman Busk, a principled man whose word was his bond. He wasn’t in the house that much because he really did work, but he was our family’s North Star and our mother’s, too. When he passed away from a sudden stroke leaving Evie behind, she was utterly lost, and I don’t blame her.

They really were a match made in heaven.