I first met Jen as a
passenger in the backseat of a Mercedes at Christmastime, on
December 21st 1971. Jen's dad, a managing Director
(President) of a company in South Africa, always drove
Mercedes company cars, so Jen was quite used to these luxury
cars by the time we first met. When I was away at war
(fighting Cuba in Angola) she was courted by the son of a
rich English industrialist, David, who went to school with
Prince Andrew in England. He would whisk Jen away on
expensive dates in his dad's Mercedes - complete with
Chauffer, a fact Jen's mother never ever let me forget! When
I arrived at university in Jen's 2nd. year at Cape Town
university she broke off with Dave and our romance picked up
where it had left off. Jen and I fell in love as teenagers,
at 16, and most thought it was just a case of "puppy-love"
and would soon disappear ... some are still waiting 49 years later. Well, it hasn't. My Dad,
a travelling African Doctor. never owned a Mercedes. Where we lived
in rural Africa (In the mountains of Lesotho) the terrain more closely resembled Tibet,
It was not practical,
better to drive a Land-rover. He raised us to think of
it as a waste of money, that money could almost always be better
spent on other things. Some people enjoy spending their money on fancy cars like Mercedes,
fine designer outfits of Armani -
but others prefer to save it for different things. Travel, houses, music... there are so many
tempting things to spend money on. You just know when a purchase feels right to you.
My mom, a cover-girl
from the 1950's, enjoyed spending my Dad's money on
beautiful clothes. My dad winced notably every time she
travelled to the big city. Now it was finally my turn to indulge in
an extravagance.
One
day this last January, a good friend of mine, Edgar, a retired high-school principal, showed me some cars he had found on the internet ... and there it was!
Instantly I knew exactly what was meant to happen and what was
expected of me - still, just to be sure, Edgar and I went to
have a look at it. Not only was it perfect, but I
immediately saw
the classic Fingerprints ("777") of our love story's Awesome Script Writer
that I have grown quite accustomed to through the years (The
license plate of VW-Golf on the RHS) So, of
course ... without even test-driving it, I
bought it. I have never owned a Mercedes, till now ...
something that was never in my plans or even under my
consideration. This little detail was well hidden
away in the "script" of
our love-story, I guess we just never spotted it or read that
far.
Now this was not just any old Mercedes, this was a
spotless "Classic collector's car", imported from
Japan, having belonged to some or other rather important
person there, seemingly chauffer-driven and complete with
embroidered seat and head-rest covers (with the Mercedes
emblem) and even a front-fender flag-mount, a Mercedes Benz
300D. That was January, 2005, the roads still icy and salty,
spring not yet in sight, so we had some time to plan.
Immediately our sons and I went to work ... Jen was not to
know for another 2 months! You see, every year, for the last
decade or so now, we prepare a very special (often
elaborate) surprise for Jen - kind of our way of all saying
"Thanks!", knowing full-well that she was forced to give up
a lot for our family and our love. I installed a Canadian
flag on the fender-mount, and had this custom dash-cover specially made in the USA.
I searched for and bought a fancy Champagne/wine cooler and two
long-stemmed glasses, took the last of our bottles of
Champagne still left over from Jen's birthday trip to Paris 2
years ago, taped some really neat golden-oldies, including our
song we danced to on our first date, "I can see clearly
now" ... and Edgar lent us his captains-cap.
I found the perfect restaurant, founded by
Countess Bubna Litite of
Austria in 1926, situated right on the lake-shore. Some people
may find spending money on things like this to be
"Frivolous", but some of you may think that all of this
stuff is fun ... and you know what, you are perfectly
correct! Planning these surprises for weeks/months is really a lot of fun!
March 24th, the night before Easter: Jen got
dressed for a dinner date, (With no idea of what was
planned) She was led by our valet
for the evening - our 18 year-old son Jonathan, blindfolded
out the front door. Then at the right moment, it was removed:
There was Daniel, our son (21), dressed
up as a "Chauffer" standing next to a spotless Mercedes
300D, wearing the insignia of my old wartime SAAF squadron on
his blazer, ready to whisk her away for a very nostalgic and special
date! Now this was not her dad or some rich guy's chauffer and valet
- this
was Jens own precious sons playing those parts! That's really tough to top,
well, impossible actually! This tongue in cheek one-up man
ship all felt "long-overdue". Here is her candid reaction to all of this:
So, as the sun was setting over the valley,
Daniel took his place as Chauffer and Jonathan helped Jen and
I into our seats ...
... both of us sitting exactly
where we sat on that day we first met in a similar Mercedes
back in 1971.
I opened our
last bottle of Champagne we had bought in Paris, and poured Jen and myself a
glass.
Jonathan turned on the music on the vintage cassette deck, a collection of
the actual songs we first danced to
back in Dec of '71, and with our song "I can see clearly now"
playing ... Daniel whisked us away on a magic-carpet ride.
One hour later, with the flag gently flying
on the fender of this stately old diplomat's Limo, both now heady with Champagne,
with the tunes and lyrics of so many nostalgic
love-songs still playing and dancing in our heads, we arrived at the restaurant:
There, watching the lights of the city
shimmering over the lake, we took our places. After 34 years
of loving each other (It's 49 now) almost 26 years of marriage
(40 now), and having
been gifted with two fine sons, Jen and I are still madly
in love with each other, and we often include our sons, as you
can see, as an integral part of this hard-earned love story.
We pray one day they find
true-love too.
I'd have to say, this finest Aussie lamb
was just perfect! Lamb never ever tasted so good!
After dinner we all went for a
stroll on the moonlit boardwalk, Jen and I some 20 yards or so
behind our talkative sons.
(photo courtesy of our youngest son - who "caught mom and
dad
on camera" doing what lovers the world over enjoy doing)
Four hours later ... but not quite done yet, Daniel went to fetch the
car, Jon opened the doors and we got in, all very thankful to our
dear God for having gifted our family with such a very
precious gift those many years ago ... the special gift of true love. Where would
our family be today without it? Now this was Easter-eve and we had one
more important "mission" planned ... our human way of saying
"Thank You!" You see, we had just all
enjoyed a memorable and loving dinner-date perhaps as far as
some 100- 200 yards from Jennifer's mother's home - you know, the
person who disowned Jen for not marrying the rich and well
connected English Industrialist's son, and the one person
who has been our love's and family's single worst enemy. Still, some 34 years later,
she stubbornly persists in that regard! So, Daniel
gently turned the
purring old Mercedes into Jen's mother's neighborhood and there - the
night late and most people tucked away inside their homes, Jonathan and
I delivered 28 (7 special gifts from each one of us) carefully prepared "Happy Easter"
gift packages,
each with the complete movie of the Gospel of St. Luke - Campus
Crusade's world-famous "Jesus Video project", along with a
printed copy of the Easter sermon by the
famous evangelist Dr. Robert Schuller Sr. (Of Crystal
Cathedral ministries - the only man alive Jen's mom respects) titled:
"What's so special about Jesus Christ", to the front door of
every home. Of course Jonathan (who she has not seen since he
was very young and thus would not recognize) delivered these to the
dangerous half of this
neighborhood, and I went to the less dangerous one! Well it
was quite appropriate, it was Easter after all ... and who knows? Just
perhaps Jen's mother watches that movie, reads the pamphlet and realizes that
the most wonderful love story ever lived (and told) still
persists some 2,000 years later, and that it is love that is important and
love which wins
the day (as well it should)
and that it is love that God wants us all to learn how to abide by,
and unselfish caring love that we are to practice daily,
everywhere, with everyone.
Then, each with a glass of Champagne, the
music from our youth softly playing, we were whisked away in
this stately old German
Classic, it's diesel engine purring softly. Later, back home again, as Jen and I were
climbing into bed, doing my best not to make her laugh
hysterically, I serenaded her with this old song :
Fairy tales can come true,
It can happen to you
If you're young at heart
For it's hard, you will find,
To be narrow of mind
If you're young at heart
You can go to extremes
With impossible schemes
You can laugh when your dreams
Fall apart at the seams
And life gets more exciting
With each passing day
And love is either
In your heart ... or on its way
*********************************
[ If you're among the very young at heart ...
(if your faith is like a child's)
]
[Recreated from period photos of Jennifer (16) this
painting exchanges a blue bikini bottom for a mermaid's tail]
[ Well, fairy tales can come true ... It really could happen to you! ]
Jen (46) 10yrs ago walking down the stairs of her favorite
"Castle", host of many a fine banquet for our family -
Banff, Canada
I hope you have enjoyed reading this story. When you read
these novels, the
significance of this
particular little romantic date becomes clear, as this
realization sets in - That this date happened at all ...
is a miracle!
A near-perfect Cross-channel blend ...
If you detected a slight "Bavarian" look and
feel to all of this, it's probably because (going back some 300yrs to
when my family arrived in South Africa, from Europe)
I am 50% German, 30% French, 10% Dutch, 10% Scandinavian and
0.0% British. But Jen, on the other
hand, as best we can figure, is 90% British (mostly English
and Scottish) and only 10% French ... and considering where
and in what
era we were born, this fact alone should have made us bitter
foes - not friends, sweethearts or a couple. You see, we were both born in the 1950's
and raised in Colonial Africa (South Africa) which had a long
and fairly recent history of these two European groups feuding bitterly, dating
back 70 years, to almost all of Queen Victoria's reign.
The Anglo-Boer war had ended just some 54 years prior to our
births, and our two families had been on opposite sides of
that conflict - a war which saw the British commander, Lord
Kitchener, in an effort to force victory on British terms,
burn down the farms of the Boers (farmers) and place their
women and children in concentration camps (YEP - Sadly, the British
invented them, not Hitler) where they were starved to death
or died of disease and exposure. In those camps, 1 in 2 of the Boer
children died, including many in my family tree, and all in
all, 25% of the Boer population - 3 times more women and
children died than did male soldiers on both sides of that
conflict. So it was that deep-seated animosity (over this
British-genocide) which still lingered within Boer families,
whilst stubborn unashamed pride (for a "Glorious" victory)
persisted amongst the victors.
Naturally this continued to divide these European colonial
cultures within South Africa for decades, and it still does.
However, fortunately, as a
young girl, Jen
grew up in a town whose most famous citizen,
the Reverend Andrew Murray (a Scotsman who learned Dutch to
become a pastor among the Boers) was a well known 1800's author of
240
wonderful Christian works still widely printed and read today,
and he had a huge influence on the spirituality of the
Boers, but not, as irony would have it, on the British
settlers there. Wellington, near Cape Town, was also a town with precious few English citizens.
So, being greatly outnumbered by the people of Dutch, French
and German decent (Afrikaners) Jen attended school along with them at the
"Huguenot high school" ... named after the
French Huguenots who fled Catholic persecution in France at
the time of Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIV, "the Sun
king", and
dispersed all around the globe - many of whom to the Cape of
good hope, where they established South Africa's wine
industry There she played and grew up with them, and even
dated them. For Jen, even mathematics and science were taught
in the language of my forefathers (not hers) - Afrikaans. Thus
the young Jennifer learned not only my language, but also all about my
culture - one of her subjects being German,
ironically a language I cannot speak. Though he was Scottish,
Andrew Murray's acceptance came from within the Afrikaner
community (the British settlers basically ignored him) and
so it is that his statue stands prominently at the head of
the main-street of Wellington, in front of the Dutch-Reform
church, and his presence is hardly felt around the
Methodist, Anglican or (worse) Presbyterian churches. Andrew
Murray kept Wellington as his home-base from 1871 till his
death in 1917. Anyone who knows anything about Rev. Andrew
Murray will realize that the upshot of all of this was that
the Boers were soon (largely) Born-again Christians with a
wonderful Evangelical zeal - and they learned how important
it is to forgive, whilst the British churches
just could not overcome their pride (as the conquerors)
enough to "listen-up" to any spiritual witnessing from their
erstwhile victims, and thus they were, at best, merely
ever-diminishing Sunday social clubs. Sadly (having attended both the
Anglican and Presbyterian churches while living in
Wellington) Jennifer left South Africa thinking she was a
Christian simply because she went to those old "English" churches every
other Sunday, and so did all of her family. That also meant that while
many of these the British
settlers still went around with their "superior" noses in
the air, most of the Afrikaners had learned that,
even though they were the victims, and had watched 1 in 2 of
their children die ... they had to forgive their
old foes and concentrate on God, Jesus and the Heavenly
family.
Now, in case you may not have noticed, Jennifer
was a very pretty young English girl, and though she would have
preferred it to be different, this resulted in her having
to endure a lot of jealousy and rejection from amongst the
few (and far too proud) English girls in her town -
ironically, her own
people. But the Afrikaners not only accepted Jennifer as
their friend, they treated her with dignity and respect.
Well, just as fortunately, at
the same time back in the 1960's - some 1,000km away in the
mountains of Lesotho, not
even aware of her existence, a young Afrikaner boy of 8, was
sent away by his parents to be educated in a fine English
(Anglican church) private boarding school, "St. Andrews" ...
"thrown-in the deep-end of the pool" - to become an "English gentleman." So it was that I was
instructed in the language, customs and culture of Jennifer's
forebears, not mine. There I went to church every day -
and TWICE on Sundays! So, I left Africa thinking that not
only was I definitely a Christian, but I had exceeded
my life-time church-going quota and there was really no need
to ever return - that my dues were "all paid up". Then, when I was 16, 8 years after being sent
to become an "Englishman", at Christmastime
in 1971, I was walking back from the beach one day, to rejoin
my parents and family at the campsite where we enjoyed our
annual summer vacation, when a white Mercedes on it's way back
from that beach, drove by, stopped, backed up and a
sophisticated "40-something" English woman
(Jennifer's mother) sitting in the
passenger seat next to a silent distinguished middle-aged man
driving that Mercedes, offered me a ride back to camp, to the
caravan park. In the
searing heat of the African Summer sun, I gratefully accepted,
this leading to the passenger-side back door being opened for me,
from within. I climbed in, finding, in that back seat - the
fairest of 16 year old mermaids (still in her skimpy little
blue bikini from her morning on the beach) with her long wavy
chestnut brown hair cascading down around her shoulders bare
... That momentary meeting initiating a tumultuous, fast
moving chain of events that rather resembled a huge complex
display of dominoes cascading ... It's had it's moments ...
it's challenges, but it's certainly not been boring! God has
certainly used Jennifer and I
(amongst countless similar examples) to once again show that
true-love can bridge many of even the greatest cultural divides ... and so
Jennifer became the first person of purely British decent in
my family tree, which goes back to 1752 in Africa. This
Christmas (2020) will mark the 50th for Jen and I. Jen and I have been
in love for all of those years - yes, most people trivialize
the love a 15 year old girl and a 16 year old boy feel for
one another - but we, and time, have proved them wrong.
We're still very much in love - so I am very tempted to finally
say "The rest is History", however who really knows
but our awesome Matchmaker ... and by that I do not mean her
mother! You see, to Jen and I - with the benefit of hindsight,
we clearly see the Hand of God having so deftly and purposely
orchestrated that, our first meeting, and the many
joyous reunions that followed so many sad, forced farewells, and then
thankfully guided so much of our life story afterwards! We have no
doubt that God, the Ultimate Universal Romantic, is the gracious sponsor
of our love story! God truly is the universe's Champion of
True Love ... in so many ways! People who've had "the other guy"
choose a mate for them, with the benefit of hindsight, all
knowingly concede this point. Well, we lived in North
America or almost 28 yrs, and to be sure, a lot has
happened since the Christmas of '71, but time and events
have shown that Jennifer and I are an almost perfect
cross-channel "European blend". We both speak
English fluently, and we both still speak a
colonial dialect of Dutch (Afrikaans) fluently. It's
great for Romantic dates in public places, since few people
in N. America, or elsewhere, can understand it. We get to
talk freely to each other over tea cups or wine glasses,
with only the twinkling of our eyes possibly betraying the
content of our discussions, and sometimes the odd word being
just a little
too similar to
an English word. And one day someone is going to make a
comment - also in Afrikaans! That will be very embarrassing,
as it's our passionate secret language!
You know, it's really a lot of fun
planning and participating in these surprises for Jen! I can't wait
until next year (Christmas of 2005, actually -
Update: notice the now older Jennifer pictured in a
classic White Mercedes below?)
for the next one to be unveiled. But, for now ... from
our initial meeting in a White Mercedes 220 at Christmastime
in 1971,
to our fairy-tale date in a Black Mercedes 300D, with
our grown sons acting as Chauffeur and Valet, on the Easter-eve of 2005
...
(The "White English rose" and her champion ... an old Germanic
"Boer"; childhood sweethearts from Africa's colonial
past)
We bid you "Farewell", and from Jen and Ian,
Dan and Jon,
a happy "Happy Easter and Life!"
PS.
So, who says Christians can't be Romantic, that we do not
understand what unselfish love is all about?
I mean, really, just
look at our role model, Jesus ... that kind of
perfectly unselfish love is, well ... awesome!
Soon
after this Easter romantic date, our family, finally tired
of almost 4 decades of rejection, sold our dream home in the
forests of British Columbia and packed our belongings
into a container to be shipped by sea. Then in our
minivan, along with Happy, our 11yr old doggie, we set out on a 11,000km
perilous, epic 23-1/2 day overland
voyage to freedom and a new life in South America. Finally
we all ran out of patience ... and simply belatedly eloped.
Here we now regularly enjoy romantic dates in this beautiful,
warm, colorful land
of "Far, far away".
This
contemporary Christian love-story served as inspiration for
a series of novels available from AMAZON penned by our son. Turning the clock back to 1971, to our first summer
romance, we never imagined, not even in our
wildest dreams or nightmares, this particular outcome - but
also not the many strange twists and turns that our
love-story was forced to continuously confront, endure and
overcome. When you wish for a Fairy-tale life,
remember - "Fairy tales can come true ... it can happen
to you!" And please do remember that Fairy-tales are not
harmless, simple, happy little stories! They are dangerous,
often sad, stressful for most of the story - only at their end, comes the
"Happily ever after".
As you read above, before we left for our new land of "far,
far Away", we tried 1 last time to get Jen's birth-mother to
"soften" her rigid stance against our love and family. This
was not the first time we had done so, but it seemed
appropriate that if we were dining so close to her home (on Easter-eve) that we do so, yet again.
Click this link for:
Snow-white, will
you marry me?
and again? and again?
www.Snow-White.US
The ecstasy, dangers, agony and rewards of falling in love with
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