THE COURTING COUCH

The davenport in the front parlor was made of flower-patterned needlepoint cushions framed in a warm-tone caramel wood.  On it sat, stiffly poised on the edge, a young man in a brown suit, about age seventeen.

The youth didn’t have long to wait, for a young girl soon bounced into the room and

did a little skip as she neared the Victrola on the side table.  Ralph, the young suitor, stood as she entered, but an amused grin spread over his face.  This was not the date he had been anticipating, but her younger eleven-year old sister.  Erma was late again.

While Erma remained in the bedroom, teasing her hair, changing her shoes three times, and powdering her nose, little sister Ruth was in the front room having the time of her life.  Or, as she assumed, entertaining her sister’s date so that he had the time of his life.  She cranked up the song on the Victrola,  Ralph obligingly took her in his arms and danced her around the room, and as the music slowly wound down, Ruth broke away to wind it up again.  She just knew that each of her sister’s beaus liked her the best!

Meanwhile, Erma was still struggling.  She had done everything she could to force her hair into the style of the day – a short wavy bob with pin curls on the sides.  The pin curls wouldn’t stay curled.  Her date was waiting.  She could hear the Victrola start again for the fifth time.  Finally, grabbing her scissors she clipped off a lock of hair from in front of each ear, twirled it into the proper shape, and stabbed a bobby pin through each curl in just the right place on each side of her head.

Later that evening, when Ralph walked Erma back from the movies, the parlor was darkened and the house was silent.  Erma lit the gas lamp on the wall, and they sat together on the sofa.  Secure in the near-darkness from prying eyes, and aware of each others' bodies so close, they began to kiss.  What they didn’t know was that little Ruth was hiding behind the curtain which separated her room from the living room.  She heard every movement and every heavy breath coming from the sofa. 

And when Ralph’s affectionate fingers touched the side of Erma’s face, Ruth clearly heard Ralph’s gasp and Erma’s high-pitched scream as the loose pin curls fell away into Ralph’s astonished hands.

A SPECIAL DATE

Trying to impress a date was an extreme sport back in the day – and there were many events in this decathlon of the sexes.  And also many epic fails.

          Brunette, hazel-eyed Ruth was in high school when she was allowed to start dating.  Friday night was the big date night.  A certain young man asked her out for a special dinner after several dates.  She looked forward to it as she laid out her clothes for school the night before, set her hair in pin curls, and planned the date-night dress she would change into before her young man arrived at 7 pm.

          She breezed through all her classes that day, being a good student – English, Typing, Mathematics – all except for Biology, because they had to dissect a frog that day.

          As she approached the science classroom, she inhaled the stomach-turning stench of formaldehyde.  She grimaced as she spied the row of jars containing pickled frogs of various sizes.  But it was no use to turn away – the deed had to be done.  She and her classmates spread the hapless frogs out onto tables, followed the teacher’s directions, and soon there were amphibian body parts spread everywhere.

          She was never so glad to get out of a classroom when the bell rang.  Running home and filling up the clawfoot tub with hot water – she tried to scrub off the stench –and the memory – of the day’s activities.  She was going on a date with a handsome man!

          Finally, dusted in talcum and dressed to the nines, she emerged in the front room

to find her date waiting.  He opened the car door for her, and they chatted pleasantly on the way to the restaurant he had picked.

          When they arrived, he whispered something to the maî·tre d', pulled back a chair and seated her, and sat opposite her with a half-grin on his face.

          The thought crossed her mind that he was planning something secret – this was a special date – but she suppressed the thought and grinned to herself, “Don’t spoil it,” she mused.  There was enough to enjoy just as it was, with the bustle of waiters balancing food trays, couples being escorted to their seats, and a well-groomed and cologne-scented man sitting across from her.

          They sipped their iced tea and chatted about school.  When she told him about science class he got a funny look on his face.

Just then the waiter emerged carrying a beautiful tray with a silver cover.  She gasped and tried to suppress a horrified “squawk” as he gracefully lifted the lid and presented the dish.  Frog Legs!!

DATING -- BACK IN THE DAY

Dating was a fine art – back in the 30’s and 40’s.  Young men and women, ages sixteen to married, thought about the date, planned the date, dressed for the date, and then told stories about the date for years to come.  They went to dances, to church picnics, to movies, on hikes, and out to dinner.  There was a lot less “hanging out” with no plan. 

There was also less “hanky panky.”  Part of the reason was that the expectation of everyone in general was that a good girl saved herself until marriage, a good man was the one with honorable intentions who wanted a good girl to marry, and everyone else didn’t count. 

Also, the watchful eyes of parents and all other older adults (i.e. aunts, uncles, grandparents, pastors, teachers, Sunday School teachers and the neighbor’s mother) were attentive to the goings-on among all singles, and so dating couples operated with much less privacy.

Mothers taught their sons how to spot a good girl and how to treat a good girl.  Young men showed up at the front door in dress clothes and were freshly washed and shaved.  They introduced themselves to the parents, sat in the parlor waiting with dad, or grandma, or little sis or whoever was there, until the girl emerged from her boudoir, fashionably late and freshly coated with a mist of hairspray and just-blotted lipstick.

He took her arm, promised to have her home by 11 o’clock, and they were off.

          Having said all this, mishaps do happen to the best-laid plans, and here are a few my mother told me:

Manger Wetter

Reaching my age in life has one definite advantage – the seasons of the past seem richer to me with every passing year.  Relationships intertwine.  Stories of how and when you knew someone sometimes span several decades.  And friends can even become family and then back to friends.

Such are my memories of Steve and Dan.  Steve is no longer with us, and Dan is the president of a college and an accomplished author.  Still, I remember them and their friendship from all those years ago.  Their friendship started before Dan and his wife Kathy became my mentors, before the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship meetings Dan led, before the long talks and the relationship advice, before Dan married my husband and me.

Back then Steve was a graduate student in Creative Writing at the University of Dallas where I became an undergrad.  I would see him go in and out of Dan and Kathy’s apartment at the end of my hallway (they were the dorm parents).  Steve had an unmistakable profile and a shock of red hair.  Those were the years before Steve became my brother-in-law; and long before he became a fireman, then a husband and father, then a pastor.

One simple poem brought all that back to me yesterday.  Steve was a poet (among his many other accomplishments) and the kind of poet whose words and phrases jabbed into my psyche like thorns amidst a meadow of wildflowers.  They were both good and sharp, both beautiful and piercing.  Unforgettable.

My former mentor Dan has published a book, and the title of his first chapter is a tribute to his friend, and my former brother-in-law, Steve.  The poem is “Manger Wetter.”  After reading it I went in search of the one picture I have of Steve and Dan together – in Boston in 1981.  I will never forget you, Steve, and neither will all those whose lives you have touched.  And Dan – Kudos.

Manger Wetter*

by Steve Mahan

Wrinkled, Crinkled

Red-skinned Squirmer

Famished Squealer,

Manger Wetter.

Gabriel salutes you!

Michael bows!

We here in Bethlehem

Bed you with cows.

We here in Bethlehem

Bed you with cows.

*Russ, Dan, Flesh-and-Blood Jesus, Second Edition: Learning to Be Fully Human from the Son of Man, Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2013. (from a chapter entitled Manger Wetter: Coming to Terms with Our Neediness)

SERIOUSLY??!!

Whenever anyone looks at me aghast and exclaims, “Seriously!!? I always say yes.  I am always serious.  I wish it weren’t so, because serious gets so little attention these days.  At a party serious gets a polite nod and a very short conversation. In the family circle, serious gets an “Oh no, Mom, we are not up for a poetry reading!”

I was born serious.  Or at least I inherited it from my mother’s early years.  The woman who raised me (i.e. her “early years) fretted over whether I would drown during my swim lessons at the local YWCA.  She stood at the top of the stairs during my high school dates and called repeatedly, “Lorraine, it’s getting late.  You have school tomorrow.”  On a brighter note, she would warn me not to take out the trash or drive to the local Krogers because “it’s dark outside.” 

During her empty nest years, she read tomes like The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant, a ten-volume encyclopedia – for fun.  Then she started writing essays (all that knowledge had to go somewhere), and you can imagine that my sister and I were overjoyed to read her treatise on “What is Wrong with the World Today” in between chasing around our toddlers.

But then I had a different mother in her later years. She said things to me like, “You never really knew me.”  I yawned and thought, “What are you talking about, I lived with you for 22 years.”  She would interject wistfully into conversations on other topics, “You know, I used to go dancing every week; I loved to hike.”  Hmmm, yeah right.

“I knew how to fence.  I learned how to fly an airplane.  I was in the Civil Air Patrol during the War. I was a Nurses’ Aide and saved several people’s lives.”

What have you done with my mother!!  I screamed.

The tales continued to unfold, but my growing astonishment came from more than past stories.  She laughed.  She told jokes.  She could take down a whole room in laughter.  She smiled.  People universally smiled back at her.  And they repeated her one-liners to me.

What have you done with my mother? 

When we were at doctors’ appointments or on hospital junkets, she cheered up the whole staff, and sometimes I could hear the whispers and titters following us down the hallway.

One day she was in the hospital and the orderly tried to transfer her from the bed to the gurney for a trip to the CT scanner.  He bungled it and ended up laying on her.  She quipped unabashed:

 “Will you come back again later – it’s been a long time since I’ve had a man on top of me!”  She was 89.

Seriously!!!??

Mom, taking life seriously.