“We’d seen each other every night for three weeks and I was getting ready to head back to New York. I was just in Philly visiting a friend.” Dad raised his gaze to the starry horizon, almost as if he were looking through a glass back to the time before I was born. “I would be heading out to Germany soon, and we were both wondering if we would ever see each other again. I had fallen pretty fast for her, that’s for sure. She wasn’t like any of the girls I’d ever had my eye on. She was fun to be around, but she was innocent too. Everything was new and amazing to her. There wasn’t a jaded bone in her body. I was kind of awkward around girls, but never around her. With her, I felt wise and clever and experienced in the ways of the world.”
He glanced at me, a tad embarrassed. “I’ve never been a very affectionate guy,” he admitted, “and Liz says I’m still not. But your mother…she didn’t seem to mind that the only thing I knew how to talk about in romantic terms was my ’67 Mustang back home.” He laughed. “Anyway, it was my last night in Philly. We were at a club, dancing, which your mother loved, and I said something like, ‘What am I going to do without you,’ and she said, ‘Take me with you.’ I laughed but she didn’t. She just smiled and said, ‘Let’s get married.’ ”
Dad grinned at the memory and I continued to listen in spellbound silence.
“I wasn’t sure if she was serious, so I said something like, ‘And what would your Amish father say if I told him I wanted to marry you?’ And she said, ‘We won’t tell him, Duke. Not until after the fact, anyway.’ And you know what? The minute she said it, I knew that was what I wanted to do. There wasn’t one person in her family who would approve, and the only one left on my side by that point was my dad, who wouldn’t care either way. No one would be happy for us, but we’d be happy for ourselves.”
He flashed me a sheepish grin.
“Everybody knows you get married in Maryland if you’re in a hurry,” he continued, “so that’s what we did. Drove right down to Elkton and found us an available chapel. She wore a blue dress and carried some kind of flowers. Daisies, maybe. Anyway, after that, it was just two hours over to Cape May for our honeymoon. That was the first time she ever went in the ocean—first time she’d ever even seen the ocean, actually. I can’t tell you how much fun it was to be there with her on that beach, to see how excited she got. Just ran right into the water, blue dress and all.”
He lowered his gaze to the fire that danced before us, his grin fading to a more somber expression. “The next few weeks weren’t nearly as fun, though, I’ll tell you that. I was still stuck in bachelors’ quarters back at my post, so your mom had to stay with one of her friends in Philly for a couple of weeks since she’d already given up her sublet. While I finished things at the base, filling out the paperwork and such so she could come with me to Germany, she spent her time wrapping up her own affairs and trying to get a passport for herself.”
He grew silent, lost in thought, so I prodded him by asking if she was successful.
He seemed to snap back to attention. “Sure was. Now that was an act of God, I’ll tell you. She prayed every day that the passport would show up before we had to leave, and, to my astonishment, it did.” With a grunt, he added, “In fact, it was her getting that passport in time that made me think maybe someday I could have as much faith in the good Lord as she did, you know? She just believed, to her very core.”
He glanced at me, adding, “I know you’ve probably been told by your grandparents that she turned her back on God when she married me. I can tell you that she did not.”
Though that knowledge was deeply comforting to me, I said nothing. I wanted him to keep talking.
After a moment, he did. “We went to see her family before we left for Germany, to tell them we were married and to say goodbye. It was a disaster. You would have thought your mother had married a mafia warlord. Her sister Sarah wouldn’t even talk to her. And your grandparents? They wouldn’t look at me. Did you know that?”
I shrugged. The way Sarah had described it, that day hadn’t gone well for any of them.
Dad turned to face the fire again. “Your grandfather pulled me aside before we left and told me to be good to your mother, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye when he said it. At least what he did next was…well, he put a hand on my shoulder and mumbled out something about God protecting us. Your mother told me later he was reciting a Bible verse, but at the time it felt totally personal, you know? Like it was just to me.”
I nodded. How sad my father didn’t know that the Bible could speak personally to him all the time if he would bother to read it.
“It was really touching, in spite of the cold welcome. I still remember it. Nicest thing anyone had ever said to me, besides your mother, of course.”
“That sounds like Daadi.”
“It was doubly meaningful because I knew what he really wanted to do at that moment was wring my neck, not pray a blessing over me.”
We both chuckled. That definitely did not sound like Daadi, the gentlest person I’d ever known.
“They never forgave me for taking their daughter away.”
I glanced at him. “Not true.”
He raised his eyebrows at me.
“I mean, that’s not the Amish way. We always forgive. If we don’t forgive others, then God in turn will not forgive us. The Bible says so.”
He took a long sip of his drink, draining the bottle.