I was a boy and she was a girl

I was a girl and he was a boy
70 years of marriage, 3 children
Ira and Dorothy are my parents neighbors in Carlsbad and usually I see him out front in slacks and a tank top, sitting in his chair at the front door just watching the goings on of so per street so when i saw him cross the street last Saturday I got the courage to ask if i could do photographs of him and his beautiful bride. Why? Was his immediate response, just because, i answered, he put his hands in his pockets and said well,we are just getting ready to have supper and Dorothy is still in her house coat. I told him that sounded perfect and to meet me outside after dinner. Which i was immediately corrected that he had eaten dinner   Earlier in the day and this was supper time. So after their supper of grilled cheese sandwiches I found them waiting in their chairs by the front door, dorothy on her purple flower house coat with zebra slippers and him in a freshly pressed button up and slacks. 
Some of  the neighbors came over to watch,but we started to visit, mostly small talk, about why he puts empty buckets over his new tomato plants to keep them safe from the wind, or how he worked thirty years for the mines in calrslabad, how they had married seventy years before, she was only eighteen and though he was nearly twenty-one he still had to get a signature from his dad to marry her, how they had three children,two boys and a girl and have had the heartache of burying two of them much too early, how he served in Oahu with his brother in the army, for two years after the war ended and how Dorothy always wanted to go to Hawaii but he would never take her. I tried really hard to convince him there's still time, but I don't think he bought it! 
 I stood there listening to everything they said and I relished in the things that this couple had to impart to our genertion, if we would just take them time to ask! As the walls began to come down and neighborhood kids played in the background we kept talking and I would see this magic happen, Ira would say something and Dorothy would throw her head back, clap her hands together and laugh, i would ask Ira a question, he would avoid it, she would answer for him which would suffice. 
I asked Ira what he first noticed about Dorothy 70 years ago and before he could answer, she piped up and said I wa a girl,and he was a boy.

Desiree