Chapter 4: The Uniqueness of a Beautiful Girl
The approaching holidays were both blessing and challenge. Europeans are much more tradition conscious than many Americans, and from my own time in Europe this could be a real time of wonderful experiences and family togetherness and spiritual uplift.
The backside was that she could hardly overlook the fact that her family experience had been shattered. Jennifer and I knew something of that as well.
The evening after they delivered the big oak table and china and stuff to ‘Foggy San Francisco' we started our holiday planning. Jennifer was there at Christine's invitation, and our calendars began to get blocked in with activities, evenings at home, things to do, events to attend, places to go, etc. I suggested we might invite a couple of Jenny's girl friends from the university who may not be able to go home for the holidays. We picked an evening to go to the Seattle Symphony for a special program, and added as well a performance of Charles Dickens' ‘Christmas Carol." We remained undecided about a performance of the Nutcracker, largely because our conversation was drifting to other things at the moment. A little planning ahead would help ease the strain for both the girls, and that in fact seemed to be the end achieved. That's what dads are supposed to be able to handle easily, right? Christmas, nevertheless, was a time with many rich and delightful memories with my wife… and there was still a large, empty place where she had been in my life, and it seemed not to want to close up. Time and experience probably are the only healers, but in many ways I was still an ICU patient in triage.
By Thanksgiving time we had been living together for nearly five months. Gradually barriers came down between us and we got better acquainted. She was a prim and proper young lady in every way, and in so being inspired me to be a gentleman at all times. Our casual dress around the apartment was always modest, though comfortable at the same time. She carried on a relentless campaign against wrinkles, and nicely ironed linen and cotton blouses were her regular dress, and, wielding her iron with skill, my dress shirts had never had it so good! Still, I could notice and frequently in the way she dressed the very delightful curves and charms of a young girl maturing into womanhood, her body very fit and well toned, lithe and graceful in her movements and the awkwardness some girls experience in adolescence altogether in her past; this all a fitting and splendid complement to her sparkling personality. She was a beautiful young lady, blossoming and glorious…and both eye-catching and heart stopping.
In light of this, as one might imagine, the living arrangements were workable and pleasant, but also imposed a certain strain. I could throw myself into my work – whether my graduate studies or the protection job – because they were important and I wanted to succeed there, but also to push thoughts and fantasies of Christine out of my immediate awareness.
It is worth noting here, as an indicator of her education and background, that the language spoken in north Germany differs markedly from that used daily by those in the south, and that the much more easy going dialects of Franken and Bayern, with which I was familiar. They, together with the Austrian in the Tirol, as well as Swiss-German, enjoy and foster quite distinctive dialectical divergences, adding a great deal of color and gaiety to the linguistic landscape. One of the differences that had always intrigued me was how a South German speaker could alter and shift the usage of various prepositions, sometimes in what seemed a quite bizarre way, and still be understood. In academic circles, of course, this and other variations in the "standard" German usage was considered dialectical or colloquial, and thus the more staid and proper Prussians in the North were often shocked by their unlettered countrymen and cousins. Such dismay only pleased the Bavarians just that much more. They were much more interested in the important things of life… like, for instance, which brewery produced the more excellent product.
Now, with Christine available as a native speaker, I could explore such fascinating details at length. Marvelous!
We could talk about all kinds of things, and it was no small benefit for me to have a native German speaker virtually at my beck and call, and we frequently did explore all kinds of topics, including German pronunciations and the subtle differences in the subjunctive verb forms… and her own academic knowledge of German stylistics and grammar was very sharp. Our conversations just could not ever get around to things about "us," nor anything suggesting any kind of feelings growing between us as a man and a woman.
It took only a little introspection to see that I could expect nothing from her in this way. Her hormones may be raging within her but she was too much a reserved and in-control-of-herself young lady to let that show; and then, too, she had no experience and exposure to a social life that would be any kind of guideline for her to use in doing so. This was actually for her a significant weakness; so far as I could discern, she had no meaningful experience that would allow her to differentiate, in my person for instance, between protector and paramour. Only gradually, as she gained trust in me as a confidant did she venture to raise questions that touched on our evolving social relationship, and then with hesitation. For my part, I had no such shortfall. I knew exactly what I wanted… the only question was how to encourage it to occur.
Christmas time… This was a fun time, encouraging, good times with my daughter and her friends from the university; increasingly comfortable relations all around; but I'm going to skip over this period in order to touch on some other experiences with her.
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It surely sounds a little melodramatic to say it this way, but it deserves some specific attention. It was during this period that I gave serious thought to her beauty and spent time and energy trying to perceive and understand what made her so very attractive to me.
It is perhaps a simple-minded observation, but most men are very susceptible to visual images, and thus a beautiful woman attracts their attention with ease. Anyone doubting here need only glance at the media for confirmation. There are, nonetheless, a number of significant variables. Neither the man nor the woman can avoid presenting to the other a visual image on a continual basis if they spend any time together at all. What the media does not bother to emphasize is that, even while men see the superficial with ease, a gentleman senses the depth of a girl's beauty as well, for it is, to coin a phrase, ‘more than skin deep.' Depth and quality are anything but uniform across the population, even so, and shallowness and sham here are sins for which no surface gloss and glimmer can possibly recompense.
Precisely what a girl need do to improve depth and quality is an elusive puzzle. Some seem to manage it in abundance with hardly a thought; others appear to have no clue though they struggle and seek.
Christine and I drove over the mountains to spend a day in Leavenworth, a little town in the Cascades that plays up its Bavarian motif and strives hard to present a South German / Tirolian cultural experience to the tourists. It was a delightful day and we both enjoyed the time and the adventure together, and she chatted with me about memories of Switzerland, which in the east around St. Gallen is not a great deal different than nearby Bavaria and the Austrian Tirol just to the east. The point I want to make here came to the fore without any warning in the middle of the day, in a very routine, nothing extraordinary situation, but was nonetheless very clear and poignant… and thus extraordinary in its own way.
It happened like this.
Leavenworth is high, it was mid-December, the temperature was just below freezing, and it had started to snow… big, downy flakes, floating leisurely to the ground. We had been window-shopping after a delicious luncheon and had found several nice items… a couple of books, an Adventskranz for our dining room table, some traditional tree ornaments, and a needlepoint kit that was one she had always wanted to do as a girl at school. We enjoyed walking in the falling snow together, and felt unhurried. I thought her to be more beautiful that I could imagine, the kind of inner beauty that makes a girl just seem to glow even at mid-day. It was all posture and carriage, and attitude and character… and a soft voice and that bright twinkle in her eye, but I don't know how to describe it otherwise. Well, she had the sweetest smile that seemed to touch me somewhere deep inside. After browsing to our hearts' content, we crossed the street to the car in the parking lot and I had to set some of the packages down to get at my keys in my pocket.
