"So I'll be your friend and I'll be your lover...."

Summer, 1987- Married in Ludwigsburg, Germany, Civil ceremony. ( Eloping)

The day before our civil ceremony, I plugged in my curling iron with the converter I had brought with me the wrong way and it melted in my hair. "G, you asked me, "Do you think we can fix it?" You meant the curling iron and not my hair. I guess you did not love me for my golden locks.
The next morning, before the ceremony, I had an appointment with the hairdresser. The ceremony was at 9:00. At 8:45, not even done , I jumped out of the chair to run home and get dressed. We waited 3 more minutes for your friend Friedhelm to pick us up. When he did not arrive, we took a taxi to find your friends waiting on the steps of the Rathaus wondering if we had decided not to go through with  it.


Winter, 1988- Church wedding, United States, February

Your aunt and uncle took a train from Pennsylvania to come to our wedding. They were to stay at my parents' house in the master bedroom. Even though they were both almost blind, just in case they could see a little, my mother repainted the bedroom and the bathroom attached to it. The night before they arrived, my youngest brother broke the toilet in the master bedroom and caused a massive leak which ran all the way down to the ceiling on the first floor. "Mom, you were just about as happy then as you were one Thanksgiving, when my other brother accidentally put the oven on clean with the Turkey in it with all of your in-laws coming for Thanksgiving."

Honeymoon, Myrtle Beach,  South Carolina
One of my friends let us stay in his condo on Myrtle beach. In those days, I would always say to myself, if you cannot swim in the water in New England in early May, then you are geting old. The ocean in South Carolina in February of that year was cold. I went in anyway. I was the only one in the water.
"G, You were always trying to pull the wool over my eyes, so when you said, " Laurie, there is a shark behind you, I poo-poohed you." When I finally turned around and saw a huge something, I got the heck out. Years later, a student told me that it was probably a whale shark. He or she probably wondered what a human was doing in such cold water. They are harmless to humans.

Winter, 1988- First week of married life, Ludwigsburg, Germany

I did not really speak a word of German. My days were so lonely without my husband. I actually cleaned. It was a small apartment with one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and a balcony. Upon arrival, uncluttered, but not clean.
Across the hall was a divorced woman in her fifties. She had painful arthritus. She was very needy, but kind.
 On the second floor there were  two  daughters in their twenties who seemed to be very immature.
They lived next to their retired parents who appeared  in my young mind to be very judgemental and nosy people. They taught me about recycling, by saying, "Frau Bartholomae, "There is too much air in your garbage bags.." They went through the paper recycling and read all of my bills and commented on them. They did so many annoying things, even when I was 8 months pregnant a few, years later, that I could not stand them. Now I realize that that is what some old people do.
On the first floor there was a couple from Yugoslavia. When I had my two babies and I placed one sandbox, and one tidy slide in what we call a backyard, but Germans call a garden, she called me over to her apartment and said," Look outside. Do you see the  beautiful green grass? That is what we want to see. We do not want to see a Kinderspielplatz." ( We do not want to see a playground.) They were in their fifties too, without children, sadly.
 Also on that first floor was Herr Heidelburger, a very kind old, old man who always showed me how to do "Kehrwoche." ( It means basically among other things , making the driveways clean enough to eat on. You have to be seen doing it even if there is absolutely no dirt.)
In that first week of lonely days while my husband worked, I cleaned. In Germany, at least then, apartments did not come with closets, among other things. One had to buy an armoire. That could take a while, so in the beginning, I had a makeshift one- a piece of metal on wheels with a place to hang things. I was already at the point of cleaning the windows, the European kind that open out widely. I had done the ones in the kitchen, one in the bedroom,and was on my second one in our bedroom at 5:00  p.m., when my husband turned the key in the lock to our studio apartment. My makeshift closet was right across from this window. I did not know it was broken. We were on the third floor with 2 stairways up to every floor. G., you entered our apartment, when I started to windex the window I did not know was broken. I struggled with that window. It was heavy. At times, maybe only seconds, that window wanted to pull me down 3 floors to the cement. At other times, I took the window back into the apartment. I ended up doing just that, where it fell on my makeshift closet and the glass shattered all over my clothes.