Romance - I am a hopeless romantic. Since reading the thoughts of BurningBird, Jonathon and others I thought I might take a moment or two to remind myself of some of the romantic things I did in courting. I first met Sue at a church youth group outing to the beach. She lived in Broken Hill (almost in the centre of Australia) and I lived in the Blue Mountains, part of the Great Dividing Range that runs along the east coast of Australia. Sue had come to Blaxland to stay with her Grand Mother while she attended the June Dally Watkins Finishing School for Girls :-)
I don't like the beach. I was attending because I was one of the leaders of the group and was needed - plus I loved going out with my friends. One of the reasons I don't like the beach is that my skin, which is quite fair, burns very easily. So I was wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt. Most likely I was wearing some kind of silly hat too - although I don't remember that specifically.
Sue attracted a lot of attention. She was gorgeous. I had my mind of loftier pursuits at the time though, and was polite, but essentially tried to ignore her - and let the hoard of young men do their best to prance and attempt to attract her attention. I tried to be absorbed in my Saturday habit of reading The Sydney Morning Herald. For those of you not familiar with Australian newspapers, the Herald is a broadsheet. The Saturday edition usually has seven or eight sections and is a good inch and a half to two inches thick. Trying to read a broadsheet on a beach on a windy day is a trial of Herculean dimensions - and certainly attracted the attention of one Suzy Allen! She was fascinated - never having met a man of such refined and sophisticated character in her entire life ;-) And she began to make her move!
Looking back I can truly say that I was just a pawn in her hands.
Somehow we ended up flying the kite that I had bought to the beach with me - and she ended up getting it stuck in some power lines, and so making an indelible mark in my mind. Smart move.
We continued to build a friendship. Me without any romantic intentions - Sue possibly with some.
One night Sue had asked me to pick her up for a home Bible study meeting we were to attend. I arrived at the meeting - sans Sue - only to be berated by the hopeful suitor Tony. Tony flew off in a cloud of righteous indignation to collect the forgotten Sue. Seems I had inadvertently made a return indelible mark in her mind. Sue and Tony returned, I apologised profusely - and the meeting continued.
The home where we were meeting had a mirror wall in the lounge room. And for some reason during the prayer time I found myself opening my eyes and looking, via the mirror, at Sue - only to find to my initial horror - that she also had her eyes open and was looking, via the mirror, at me. Yikes. What was I to do?
I did what every good boy would when faced by such overwhelming temptation - I closed my eyes. But later peeked - and really enjoyed making eyes for the rest of the looooooong prayer time.
Sue eventually returned to her home and I kept in touch via the postal service. I would buy 64 page exercise books and write long love letters, adding coloured pictures and water colour paintings as illustrations. I would post them in big envelopes using tons of 1 and 2 cent stamps to pay for the postage and addressing them to "Sussannah Allen, the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world" This caused much commotion and comment in Sue's small one horse town of Menindee (about 110 kms from Broken Hill - near the big "N" on the map I've linked to) where she and her family lived.
I also bought a scenic calendar of the Blue Mountains and made notations on most days of each month. Little snippets like "I love you more today than I did yesterday" or "only 59 more days till I see you again" or more hopefully "Wedding day"...
Sue's family and I met at her graduation ball, a glamorous afair at the Manly Pacific Hotel. Her brothers first words to me were
"So, Vic, do you water-ski, play rugby, can you throw a sheep?"
I didn't know what to say, and so said the first words that came into my head
"They're those woolly things that go baaaaa, aren't they?"
That seemed to break the ice and the evening went as smoothly as could be expected given that Sue's mother had invited the recently dumped boyfriend along - what a nightmare!
I believe in love, and I also believe in destiny. I believed that Sue was destined to be my wife, that God had created her specifically for me and had created me specifically for her. Sue also believed this. Yet it took us almost two years to the day to get married, even though I asked her to marry me the second week we were going "out" together. It was very romantic - I had just taken her to have lunch with and meet my family. I pulled the car over on the way home and just "popped" the question. She said yes. But it still took two years!
On the day I proposed - properly this time, with a ring - I had planned a wonderful picnic in the country. Blanket. Hamper. Champagne. Secluded spot. But on the way it started pouring with rain. And some bozo smashed into the side of my car! We eventually got to the picnic spot and had a wonderful picnic in the back of the station wagon - spreading the rug and all. Sue was overwhelmed with the ring. I had designed it myself and had to get a bank loan to pay for it! (The women at the bank were so jealous that I would spend so much on an engagement ring).
To sustain a marriage [we've only been married 11 and a half years] requires commitment, a sense of humour and some romance. I still to this day buy flowers, chocolates, offer a kind word, a silent backrub. Sometimes a quiet kiss on the neck, a look across the table - a hand with the dishes or an offer to go shopping. Whatever it takes to let Sue know that I still consider myself to be the most blessed man on the planet because she loves me.
What else can I do?
7:07:23 AM 
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