Pride and Prejudice

 

You grandchildren never knew your Grandpa before his accident.  Your mothers can tell you all about that but I want to tell you about Grandpa and I meeting and falling in love.

We did not fall in love at first, second, third, fourth or fifth sight. I can see Grandpa getting all fidgety in heaven because he knows what’s coming.  He never defended himself or explained, so you just have my word that the story is true. If you have read Pride and Prejudice at a slow speed, you will soon recognize a theme.

My friend Hilda and I were at church Easter Sunday 65 years ago.We were 14 years old.  She spotted Dave across the parking lot. He was class president at her high school and he was gorgeous. Hilda grabbed my hand to go over and “meet” him.   She giggled and squealed “I’m Hilda—-I go to high school with you.  Just wanted to say Happy Easter.”  I saw how arrogantly he reacted to us like we were beneath his recognition, so I just said ” Happy Easter” and turned to his brother Tom for conversation to hide my embarrassment.  For years, I never forgave his 17 year old self  for his reaction of superiority to Hilda and me. 

A few years later, I started picking Tom up for youth fellowship.  On at least one occasion, Dave was sitting in the living room and looked out the door.  Years later, I asked him about this and he said, “Did you drive a Studebaker?”  “Why, yes I did.”  “I don’t remember you but I remember that car.”   

Fast forward to our mid twenties.  He was dating my friend Mary.  We attended parties together and even doubled on one occasion, but he never acted like he  knew me so I stopped introducing myself and just ignored him.

One Friday I asked Mary if she wanted to go to Collegiate Club with me—-a huge city-wide dance party.  It was a place to meet other single people..  She said she couldn’t go because she was going out with Dave. I nodded and went with other friends.  After we got there, I saw Dave walking in with his best friend Elliott. I looked at Dave, my eyes widened and I was so angry I was actually shaking.  His friend picked up on my “interest” and urged him to ask me to dance.

Trying to collect my thoughts, I agreed to dance with him.  He did not recognize me or pick up my anger vibes.  After the music stopped, I looked up at him and said, “I thought you were going out with Mary tonight.” He LOOKED at me and said, “Please don’t tell her you saw me here.”  “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t”  And I held my head high and walked away. They left.

After that we continued to go to parties together knowing of each other but keeping our distance.  He and Mary drifted apart. Other friends of mine had expressed interest in Dave but I discouraged them telling them he was “stuck on himself”. He with his Pride and I with my Prejudice based on my 14-year-old opinion of him.

This group of friends that we partied with also went on float trips together. One September, I arrived at a float trip a day late..  When I got there, everyone was sitting around the campfire and they were remarkably glum—-not the usual lively crowd.  I saw that two of my friends were bedraggled and drying their clothes over the fire on sticks. When I asked, they told me they’d been in Dave’s canoe. They’d hit a rock and capsized in frigid water. They’d given him a tongue lashing which is why the party was so quiet upon my arrival. I thought, “And for this you’re ostracizing him?”He looked so pitiful..  I didn’t like him, but this was harsh.

The next morning we got up bright and early, were choosing who we’d canoe with for the day.  No one wanted to be with Dave. I found my opinion of him starting to change—-I felt sorry for him, so I volunteered to  paddle with him.

He later told me that is when he started falling in love with me.  After the float trip, we started hanging out together at parties more.  My friend Mary noticed and said, “I think you should go out with Dave.”  We started dating in November and married in June—-more than ten years after we first met. And i loved being married to him every single day: for better or for worse, in sickness and in health and that doesn’t change with his death. He was well worth waiting 10 years for—-my Mr. Darcy.  

Butterfly Flight

 Flitting from flower to flower,

Chasing color in the sunlight.

I sit on a shoulder, my wings slowly fanning.

A hand runs to capture me, but

I fly away.

Pinching fingers reach for me, 

I flee.

flying for my life.

Another still, soft shoulder.

I relax, moving my wings ever so slowly.

A voice speaks to me in soft tones.

I drift asleep believing

 I found comfort on this shoulder.

I whisper

“I will stay with you. Don’t try to own me.”

The shoulder gently moves

And stands.

I panic and fly away.

Then I hear in the wind,

“I just wanted to walk. . . with you”

The wind blows me further away.. . 

September 1966-September 1968 RIP

After our tearful parting

We promised to live happily ever after. . . 

Later.

Letters for fourteen months of you

filling out job applications 

And, hearing from family,“what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of you 

getting transcripts translated 

And, hearing from friends, “what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of  you

interviewing others about working in USA 

And, hearing from associates, “what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of you

trying to uproot your life to move here 

And, hearing from Kneipverein,“ what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of you

trying so hard to save our relationship 

And, hearing from board members, ”what about Viet Nam?”

One last letter from you about

going to the consulates in Munich and Berlin

And, finding out about Viet Nam.

I didn’t have the strength to write you back

When you said it wasn’t going to work out:

You would be drafted to fight in Viet Nam.

I didn’t have the courage to say

I would rather you be alive and out of reach

Than dead in Viet Nam.

I was too consumed with my own hurt 

To respond with “Thank you for trying so hard.

I’m going to miss you. I love you. Good bye.”

And 57 years later it haunts me.

I never said “Auf Wiedersehen.. . . . “

The Pinning Board

 

Writing helps sort my thoughts.  

Feelings and memories flit around in my head like butterflies.

I chase one down, holding it gently until I can mount it on paper.  

Then, I go after another  and mount it on paper. 

And another. 

And another. 

At last my thoughts are as clear as the summer sky.  

I look at the butterflies of my soul, 

No longer free to fly, but mounted on paper.  

I sadly look at those beautiful memories

Stabbed and still.

no longer flying

Reinhard

 Before I left home for Germany, Denny McClelland  told us that he’d written his best friend when he’d been the exchange student—-Reinhard.  He’d sent Reinhard my name and address. I’d received a letter very formal and stilted before I left for Germany and I’d replied with my itinerary and where I would stay.  My family and I tried to imagine what he would look like.  We all agreed blond hair and blue eyes, muscular and tall.

I’d been expecting the phone call and was dreading another “set up” that would be TV at his apartment fending off his moves or a drunken night at a disco dance cafe again fending off the moves.  So, I took a deep breath and agreed to a date the following week. I still had my hands full with TV-Peter, Disco Hellmut and Georg who talked down to me like I was his “little woman”.  My “dance card” couldn’t get any fuller and I was not looking for another one to “dance “with..

A week later, in walked a handsome,bespectacled, tall, dark man with bushy eyebrows, a cleft chin and a friendly smile. We’d already decided to go to a cafe to get acquainted.  I think my mother knew Reinhard would be “trouble” when she read my one page description of our date.

“We went to a cafe and talked for about five hours. . . .We talked about Berlin and divided Germany, Nazism and the last war, communism and Viet Nam, literature, art, music.  Hearing him tell about East Germany and East Berlin (where he was from) is enough to make you realize the threat [of Communism]. Reinhard said that he can’t understand why his parents didn’t realize what was going on in the concentration camps during WWII.”

After that date, we went out to an organ concert in Ottobeuren basilica, went hiking, ball room dancing at a nice ballroom. out for dinner at one of the local inns, played cards with an older couple, a cafe for wine and talk again, and finally on our 8th date. . . . he kissed me.  That was the way to my heart:  hiking, dancing, concerts, wine and talk, playing cards and then after we went walking in the rain window shopping at night, he kissed me.

I soon joined his exercise class called Kneipverein where we also played volleyball and basketball followed by wine and beer at a local pub.  Everyone in the class was older than we were, but I enjoyed the companionship of more mature people.

Kneipverein Group

Well, they might have been more Reinhard’s age since he was 6 years older than I was which means his childhood was during WWII and the harrowing last days of Berlin being bombed.  He went to the university, got his degree in architecture/civil engineering and was working on a large municipal project for an indoor swimming pool in Memmingen.

Several weeks later, we went to our favorite pub for dinner and he confessed he was concerned about our future.  I laughed and said “That’s 8 months off” and thought, “I’ve never had a relationship that lasted more than 3 months”.  He said, “It’s going to get worse not better, “ meaning our parting would be more difficult than if we ended it now.  But we didn’t break up but kept seeing each other several times a week.

We even went on several trips together including several ski trips, a trip to Switzerland and one to his home in Berlin for New Year’s .I stayed at his home and met his widowed mother.  I got along with her pretty well, but there was some friction when she and I shared a room on one of the week long ski trips. I think she was beginning to worry.

Berlin NYE

Reinhard was very kind and gracious even inviting my friends out to dinner when they visited me and served as chauffeur and tour guide for our excursions in Bavaria. A close friend of mine, Carol, visited me about once a month. Our activities usually included Reinhard.  She confessed that she never thought we were that serious about one another.  We certainly didn’t cling to each other in public.  To be honest our size difference made it difficult to walk arm in arm or even to slow dance.  He once said he’d never danced with a Zwerg (dwarf) before.

On an excursion with friends---Boden See

 As the year came to a close, he gave me a ring.  I had to return to St. Louis to finish my degree, and he had another year on his construction project, but he vowed to come to America in July of 1968 after I’d graduated.  We kissed and cried as I got on the train and headed for the long trip home.