Danny and Ursula
In the midst of our preparations for the trip to Europe Roger has planned for us, Danny has been making his own plans. Ursula’s work permit has run out. She has to go home. It will be six months before she can return. Danny plans to follow her to Germany, meet her family, marry her in Paris, and whisk her off to Navarra to introduce her to his family. I’m so glad I had a daughter and not sons.
As self-involved as Valerie was at Danny’s age, she at least has some idea of the effect her actions had on me. Danny appears to have given no thought at all to how Ursula’s parents, and Alaya and Elazar, will react to a hasty marriage between two young people from different cultures and religions. Danny is Catholic. Ursula is Protestant. They will be married before their parents have an opportunity offer any wisdom on the pitfalls that may lie ahead. When Roger and I get wind of this plan we don’t hesitate to speak up for the parents involved, but Danny is prepared for this.
“Aunt Dee, this is exactly why Ursula and I are eloping. We don’t want to give our families time to talk us out of what we want to do.”
“And what is it you want to do that you think your parents will object to?”
Danny is silent for a moment. “We want to be Americans.”
At once the irony strikes me. Anger over America’s growing involvement in the Vietnam War is causing widespread disaffection among our young people, but these two see only the dream.
“We want freedom to be who we want to be, do the work we want to do, make money, buy a house, make babies.”
Danny’s cola-colored eyes brim with excitement no amount of unsolicited advice can drain off, so I don’t offer any. I know something about dreams. If I had pursued mine earlier, I might not have lived such a lonely life. But then, I might not have had Valerie and all the blessings of family I enjoy now, so who’s to say? My heart fills with admiration for the courage and hopes these two have. Perhaps I can help pave their way with my sister.
Roger, Danny and I put our heads together over our date books and figure out that Danny and Ursula can travel to the farm the week Roger and I plan to be there.
“Danny, think about this. Why not let your families be part of a small ceremony in Paris? You don’t see it now, but if you want to maintain ties with your family you need to include them in the big events in your life. I’ve seen enough of Ursula’s love for children to know she got her nurturing soul from somewhere. Good parents will come around.”
I can’t hold back that bit of advice. Danny takes it well and I add writing two letters to my long list of preparations for what is becoming an increasingly complicated itinerary.
Valerie tries to be cheerful about the chaos in the house. Danny is packing up, leaving boxes in the garage he’ll retrieve when he and Ursula return. Roger and I run around renewing our passports, buying new luggage, giggling like little kids planning a tree house adventure.
“Mom, I don’t mean to be such a Grinch, but I feel like Cinderella stuck by the hearth while the rest of you go off to the ball.”
I look around the room and take her hand in mine. “It’s a lovely hearth.”
“I know. How come my world feels so small in this big house?”
“Well, you’ve been pretty consumed dealing with everything that’s happened and learning to be a mother. Things are starting to settle down now. Babies are wonderful, but they’re tedious as well.”
“I know! I love being a mother but I miss...”
“Free time? Work you can set aside when you get tired?”
“Yes!” She looks at me like I’ve just named a new constellation in the night sky.
“Maybe it’s time to look for some other moms to talk to. I think there’s a moms group at church.”
“Is that what you did?”
“No. But I wish I had. You girls today are so much more community minded than I was raised to be. Don’t try to be a mom all by yourself.”
The quiet in the house shatters when Danny steps on Puffy’s tail on his way to the garage with an armload of boxes. Puffy yowls and runs. Boofus chases her, knocking into a plant stand in the atrium, sending a potted palm crashing to the tile floor, triggering howls from behind the nursery door. A few weeks ago, I would have told Valerie to sit and let me get the baby. Now I sit and let her go.
R
Roger and I toured Europe for a month. We made some adjustments to our plans to allow Danny and Ursula time alone with Alaya and Elazar before we all met up in Paris to witness the civil ceremony in Saint Germain. Ursula’s mother came to Paris to stay with Ursula during the required residency period and helped plan the wedding lunch at a neighborhood bistro after the short ceremony. What should have been simple turned out to be complicated and expensive. Danny had to fly back to the States a week before the wedding on Triophonics business. He barely made it to the town hall office where an official conducted a brief ceremony in French that the Europeans understood but the Americans did not.
Alaya and Elazar were unhappy that there would be no Catholic ceremony and Ursula’s parents were equally unhappy that there would be no wedding at their Protestant church, but both sets of parents were won over by Danny and Ursula’s devotion to each other.
Two World Wars have devastated European churches. Faith traditions are being abandoned; the lovely cathedrals left standing are becoming relics of the past instead of beacons of light for the faithful. I pray that God will raise up a new generation of men like Father Mike and women like Laura who will speak the words of love and peace we so desperately need to hear.
R
After Paris, Roger and I spent our remaining vacation at the farmhouse in Navarra. While Elazar took Roger around the property and into town, Alaya and I made plans for her visit to California.
And now she is here.
Alaya sidesteps moving boxes stacked in the hallway. She follows me through the atrium into the living room where Valerie has installed Miren in her playpen. Miren stacks plastic bowls in noisy concert with her mother’s pot-banging efforts to master a French recipe in her new James Beard cookbook. I stop to kiss the top of Miren’s curly head as we pass by, and Alaya slips a cookie into her chubby hand. Miren kerplops the cookie into a pink plastic bowl and then topples over and buries her face in the shallow dish.
“How I wish I’d had a daughter,” Alaya says as we make our way out onto the patio.
“Well, you have two chances at a granddaughter.”
Domeka has settled into a quiet life in Argentina, where he met and married a local girl. Still, the minute those words slip from my lips I know what my sister will say.
“I will not have the privilege of watching my grandchildren grow up.” She thinks this is a privilege I am throwing away, but she doesn’t say that.
Roger and I tried to time the announcement of our plans to move to Pacific Grove to coincide with the migration of our young relatives toward their new futures. It makes sense to me that we should give the new parents privacy. Of course, Valerie does not see it this way.
“Mom! I can’t believe you want to move so far away from your granddaughter!”
“Valerie, you knew this living arrangement was temporary. It’s time Roger and I establish our own home.” I explain the Biblical concept of leaving mother and father and cleaving to husband. I point out how close we will be, a two hour drive at the most, and how dedicated Roger and I are to being part of the young people’s lives, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
“Then why are you moving so far away?” Valerie hikes Miren up on her hip and glares at me.
“Oh sweetheart, you are a beautiful wife and mother. You are so far ahead of where I was when I was your age. You have the good sense to appreciate what you have. I need to do the same. I need to build a life with Roger, but that takes nothing away from my love for you and Miren. I will always be here when you need me.”
“Just not when the laundry is piling up, or I need to run out to the store, or I can’t find a babysitter I trust...” and we both started laughing. “Okay I get it. You want your own life and you think if you beat feet over to the coast, a little distance will protect you. It won’t. I guarantee it. You won’t be able to resist making the drive several times a week to hang loose with little fat cheeks.”
She pinches Miren’s cheeks together and the baby blows me a raspberry. Pbbbbt! Miren locks her fierce little eyes onto mine and shakes her curls.
I explain this to Alaya while we soak up the morning sun that has chased the fog back to the coast. Alaya and I have so much to talk about. Since the day we reunited in Bakersfield so many years ago, we have learned the truth of the Basque proverb our father sent to our mother. Family relationships can be rebuilt, but time lost cannot be recovered. We can go forward, but we cannot go back.
Although Alaya and I have kept our pledge to keep in touch through letters and visits, we have never been able to recover the lost years of sisterhood we were denied by our parents’ decision to separate us. What we share now is hope for our children’s future. The love we have invested in our young people binds them to each other in ways we hope will last. Even as they settle far away from each other, borders are freer now and travel is becoming less expensive. I imagine the cost of international phone calls will decrease, just as long distance phone calls in the United States are so much cheaper than they were ten years ago.
We have our heads together over glasses of iced tea when Boofus begins a ruckus at the front door that sends Puffy scrambling for cover.
Crossing through the house, my bare foot comes down on a stray alphabet block causing me to hop on one foot to the door while rubbing pain out of the arch of my other foot. My surprise at being able to keep my balance is nothing compared to the surprise of seeing Lukas when I open the door.
Long legged and neatly groomed, Lukas gives me a shy smile. He holds an envelope and a pen in his hand.
“Hi Mrs. Russell, can you give me Father Mike’s new address? I’m preparing my Eagle Scout application and I want to ask him if he would give me a recommendation.”
“I’d be happy to do that Lukas.”
I have the Mathesons’ new address memorized. Lukas steps into the foyer, lays the envelope down on a stack of boxes, and begins to write. My heart catches as I watch him print carefully, The Reverend Michael Matheson. This dear man I was once so close to now lives at a distance. The intimate conversations we used to have are now reserved for his wife and my best friend Laura, and rightly so.
Lukas has also been the beneficiary of Father Mike’s great wisdom. Once a droopy-shouldered kid carrying the weight of the world, Lukas is now a young man whose eyes sparkle with hope. Even though the authorities deemed no penalties were due in Scott’s death, Father Mike saw the guilt Lukas carried and assigned him penance that saved his life. Of course, Lukas may not have understood that the community service Mike got him involved in would draw him out of his pain, but he trusted the man who bounced basketballs around in the driveway with him. And here he stands today, reaching boldly for a worthy goal. God is good.
I close the door and limp back out to the patio to find Alaya checking her airline tickets for her departure time. We never get enough time together.