Courtship and Engagement | Part 5

by Elouise

Fall 1963. I have only one vision of D. It’s sitting on my dresser. D is smiling, looking directly into my eyes, dressed in an immaculately clean shirt, with tie and blazer. He couldn’t look better.

I’m so grateful for this photo. Can’t you see it in his eyes? He’s promising me paradise! I love it. I long for it. I dream about it.

When we were courting, I don’t remember one single time when the clean, neat, polite, well-shaven D was missing in action. True, things got a little less orderly on choir tours. But never out of hand.

At Bible college in the 1960s, men sitting at a cafeteria table stand when a woman walks up to join them. One of them helps the lady (me!) into her throne-like chair. When the lady wants to leave, she is helped out of her chair. It is not ladylike to do it yourself.

Men stand for me if I walk up to them in a room. Men are right there to open a door, carry books, help me into cars and out of cars, let me go first in line. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do! And of course, the men are always clean, neat and tidy in our presence.

Reality comes to Savannah, GA, Christmas 1963
I’m so excited I can hardly bear it. D is coming for Christmas! I haven’t seen him for 4 lonely months.

It’s a long journey from the West Coast to the East Coast. D and a friend will drive across the country together. It might take 3 or 4 days, nonstop. That’s OK with me. I can’t wait to see him!

About 24 hours into the journey I get a long-distance phone call. It’s D! They’ve had serious car trouble. He had to leave his car somewhere in Arizona. He now has a $99 Greyhound bus ticket that will take him anywhere he wants to go in the USA for the next 30 days.

D can’t say exactly when he’ll arrive. He’ll call when the bus gets close to Savannah. It stops in every city and every tiny town between there and here. No overnight facilities. No food service along the way. It’s all make it up as you go along and hope you can make it to the next Greyhound bus stop.

D calls. He’ll be here in about an hour. My parents and I drive to the bus station downtown. Finally, someone gets off the bus who looks a bit like D. Is that D?

Then he grins. I recognize his grin. I don’t recognize the stubble that covers his face or the rumpled clothes or the strange smells that waft through the air when he hugs and kisses me. Is this D?

To make matters worse, his luggage got left somewhere along the way. It isn’t here yet. He has no change of clothes! By now we’re walking toward the car.

I feel embarrassed to be seen with D looking like this. I don’t like the way I feel, and it seems I can’t help it. I walk slightly ahead of him. Is that the lady-like thing to do?

My parents converse with each other and announce that we’re going to stop at the J. C. Penney Department store on the way home so D can get several necessities. My father will loan him a shirt and trousers.

Such a kind thing to do. Yet I feel utterly mortified. I might meet some of my friends along the way. What will they think? This isn’t the D I’ve been dreaming and talking about.

Ice cold water. That’s what it’s like. D doesn’t seem at all distressed that I don’t look like the dresser-top picture I gave him of me. We have a wonderful Christmas before he gets back on the bus. Yet my shame and embarrassment linger. They don’t disappear or get resolved; they go underground.

To be continued….

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 18 March 2015