Paco

Gerald Thomas Hadd was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on May 24, 1951.  The Hadd family of his ancestry had immigrated to the U.S. from Czechoslovakia at the turn of the century through Ellis Island.  The story of their transplantation involves a cow of theirs stolen by a neighbor and some apparent nonchalance on the part of the local law enforcement in restoring that cow to its rightful home.  Originally the family was Catholic, but that was replaced by Presbyterianism over the unreasonably high cost of baptizing an infant into the Catholic church in St. Paul.  It seems that the cost of baptizing an infant was rising exponentially with the cost of the new cathedral.  The influence of a charismatic Minnesota minister in his youth led Jerry to follow in similar ministerial steps.  He spent a year in a Kansas college towards that end, but when a friend invited him to come along to Provo, Utah, where he was pursuing a young lady, he jumped at the chance.  Utah meant skiing, and Brigham Young University was, after all, a church school!  This was amazingly his first introduction to the LDS church!  He was quickly landed in a barber chair because of long sideburns when he tried to register and soon discovered that indeed, "This is not Kansas, Toto!"  A baptism followed mid-year.  But I hasten to add as a postscript that he would have made a dynamite preacher!

(Elder Hadd, Marseilles, France)

A low draft number and a desire to save money for a mission steered him into enlisting in the army.  Vietnam was fortunately not in his stars, and he spent his time in Honolulu in a base hospital as a lab tech.  Then a mission to France and Switzerland, a degree from BYU, and a masters and PhD in Family Science from the University of Minnesota followed.  He married, experienced the dramatic deaths of two day old infant children born within a couple of years of each other, subsequently divorced, pursued his professional life, and was doing market research in Beijing, China, for the Gallup Organization when I showed up in his email on April 6, 1997, curious about his China residency after having read his short profile on ldsfriends.org.

About six weeks into this email "courtship", Jerry invited me to "stop by" in July when I was going to be in the general vicinity of Beijing visiting my daughter Shelly in Osaka, Japan, where she was completing a year as a Rotary exchange student.  As I landed in China, I had a fleeting moment of clarity and wondered, "WHAT IN THE WORLD???" But then I saw him in the terminal bearing a "Marilyn" sign standing amidst a small Chinese mob, and my innate sense of adventure overtook me.  He whisked me off to see the sights and safely deposited me in a hotel every night for the next four days.  Ever the perfect gentleman.  Six weeks later at the base of the Grand Tetons we cinched the deal.  Then he returned to China, and nine months and 13 bound volumes of email correspondence later we were married in the Logan Temple surrounded by delightful family and friends.

Our life together began in Maine. Some would argue that a married life begins with "I do", but I disagree.  My married life began when I woke up in a bed and breakfast in Bar Harbor and realized (in a cold panic, I might add) that I had committed MARRIAGE!  As a veteran of other such vows run amuck, I knew only too well what that entailed, and I was petrified.  I'm so sorry to admit that this tainted some of the honeymoon.  All of a sudden eternity seemed like...well...ETERNITY!  I was claustrophobic and wanted to run.  Fortunately, that all pivoted a week later in Harvard Square.  Jerry handed me $25, pointed me in the direction of the campus bookstore, and said he'd see me in an hour.  I knew I'd chosen well and would not only survive in the marriage but thrive.  And since that moment I have never looked back.

Early on I detected a pattern of repetitious story telling.  He had a whole litany of stories and experiences that he told prompted by buzz words in conversation which I came to recognize after about seven or eight times.  We had a very adult conversation about that and my fear that one day I might casually put a blunt object through his forehead.  The deal we worked out is that he warns me when a story is coming up (if I don't catch the buzz word), and I go the ladies room while he tells guests his captivating tale.  Every now and then a new story emerges, and I am actually delighted and listen aptly.  Having spent time with his parents, I see perfectly the genealogy of the storytelling gene.  It's a Minnesota/large Czech family/Lake Wobegone/kitchen table habit sometimes supplemented by alcohol, I'm sure, in the past.

And so the story goes.  We just celebrated 20 years.  Our path together has wound all over the world, and our adventure continues!  Even though I zig sometimes when he zags, or he wants to "graze" from a London grocery store, and I'd rather try that little Indian place we passed, or I want to go into a western art museum, and he thinks it's too pricey, we ultimately agree about the important things.  We are equally yoked.  I love him because he recites poetry, and he loves me because I bring home flea market stuffed monsters who take on entire personas.  He loves me because I "whither thou goest" with him even when  I dearly dearly don't want to move, and I love him because he finds incredible Italian restaurants tucked away in lower Manhattan.  I love him because he brings surprises home and tells me to hold our my hand and close my eyes, and he loves me because  I give him things like a sauerkraut making kit and dehydrated camping food for Christmas.

I freely admit that the equation of my marriage doesn't seem to compute.  I receive way more than I feebly try to give back.  Even if you add in my inherent charm and multiply by my quick wit, I fall abysmally short.  But none of that seems to matter to Jerry.  His mathematics apparently have nothng to do with multiplying or dividing or carrying the one or subtracting.  Synergistically speaking, the sum of our union is much greater than the sum of our individual parts.  That may not make sense either.  Happily my analysis need go no further.

(cinching the deal!  Grand Tetons--August 1997)

(honeymoon--biking in Acadia National Park, Maine)

(with pre-schoolers in Mesa, AZ during a brief, but interesting, stint with Teach For America)

(Washington DC)

(Jerry's sister, Diane, with her husband Wayne following their elopement wedding on Lake Superior a few months after ours--1998)

(from one of my 60th Birthday blogposts in 2013)

Paco and I are approaching our 15th anniversary. That may not sound like much to seasoned veterans of marriage.  But rather than lament about that, we've chosen to celebrate in grand fashion--more on that later, AND it will come with an ALERT because you may run screaming from the computer, "I HATE THE HADD'S!!!!! I'm pausing to make a list of 60 marvelous magical things of a Paco-vian nature:

Keeps the home fires burning literally (we heat partially by woodstove)
Scrubs the kitchen floors
Is the master of uber intelligent conversation (I maintain that he's the smartest person in the whole gosh darn state...)
Does the wash
Womps up some pretty mean French dishes
Walks the dog
Pays the bills
Never EVER complains when I take off for a night, day, week, month...
Will go to the temple with almost no notice at all
Disposes of mice
Fathers 9 alpacas
Calls his mother every week
Brings flowers on occasion (in the first 5 years of marriage when he had ready access to fresh flowers    in Penn Station he brought them WEEKLY!)
Attends school board meetings just for fun and makes wry remarks to people around him
Is my live-in substitute teacher ( LURVE this one!)
Brings me breakfast EVERY single day
Warms up the bathroom for me to take a shower
Delivers anything I ever forget to my school
Goes on provisional shopping trips
Sews sleeping bags, backpacks, and polar fleece items
Does copious amounts of internet research on a topic I might just casually mention AND binds  it         into ready reference books (I'm not making this up!)
Maximizes EVERYTHING i.e. vacation plans etc. When you travel with him you accomplish 3   times what a tour agency would squeeze in.  He's phenomenol at planning. Masterful
Takes on about 95% of the cooking and dishwashing
Mends
Irons
Does the yard work
Paints inside and out
Makes exotic homemade soaps for special romantic gifts
Is always on time
Makes the most delectable boules (French peasant breads with only yeast, flour, salt, and water) to   eat with his amazing soups
Keeps trim and fit
Gives me lots of good belly laughs...very cerebral sense of humor.  Not much on frivolity
Untangles all my technology snafus
Loves to invite people over and cook for them
Maintains a cool new website
Gives great back rub "treatments" to Mugsy and me
Loves to soak in the bathtub (his one self indulgence)
Reads any and every book about Teddy Roosevelt
Can't get enough of Downton Abbey
Is very very content
Delights in surprising me with all manner of things
Loves to haul hay to our animals on his little blue tractor
Bears no malice for anyone--unlike the shrew he married
Home teaches religiously
Does carpentry work around the house upon request
Loves to tote around a large backpack whenever we go anywhere and gets giddy if he has something   in it that you ever actually need! He used to "backpack" across Time Square in a suit when he   worked in the city. Very distinguishable among the throngs.
Loves to pour over seed catalogs and Mother Earth News. I think it surprises even him that deep   down inside him was a Granola!
Gives conference-worthy talks!!! Really he does
Is the BEST teacher. When he got released as gospel doctrine teacher in Princeton, some friends of   ours wore black armbands in protest!
Watches Perry Mason ad nauseum
Talks to himself even when I'm around--it's his method of problem solving from politics to   sociological concerns
Swings an ax like Paul Bunyan and amasses an incredible amount of firewood every fall
Teaches me French children's songs
Strums a mean guitar (and supposedly banjo too, although I've yet to confirm that.  He may be a   closet one of those.)
Mimics some people perfectly, although he'll deny that and won't do it publicly
Perfect griller
Surprises me--I came home to jumbalaya tonight!!! A first!
Sings duets with me
Has read the Harry Potter books all through five times
Loves Madd