1012 TWINKLE TWINKLE—REVISITED 7

(Writing complicated thoughts, running through my mind, is one thing.  Reprocessing the rawness of thoughts, complicated by emotional reactiveness, proves necessary when retentive absorption of informative knowledge is our primary goal.  As yesterday's thoughts, pulsing with complicated emotion, were in need of simplification, you might want to review that post before moving forward—as did I.)

(7)

In our family, hero worship was not unusual.

From the moment my father had first laid eyes on my mother—at a public dance where they’d met in May of 1941—he was smitten.  And Dad remained smitten with ‘his Jennie’ until late into his eighties, when he’d exhaled his last breath.  On countless occasions, I’d watched my dad stand mesmerized, while staring at my mom.  Here's how that played out before my eyes, repeatedly:

Assuming a relaxed stance—with one hand resting lightly on his hip—my Dad stands, staring at my Mom, drinking in his vision of black-eyed, raven tressed, curvaceous, feminine perfection.  While standing there, utterly transfixed, Dad’s inner glow of gladness shines forth from his smile until his eyes glisten like a pair of star sapphires.  Ultimately, an incandescent radiance enhances my father’s entire being.  I kid you not.

As seconds pass, Dad’s intoxicated gaze prevails until Mom blushes and laughingly exclaims, “Jack!  Stop that already!”  Then waving her hands, back and forth, before Dad’s face, Mom breaks through love’s magic spell.

Ultimately, during that final moment of mesmerized adoration—right before his state of heightened awareness descends into the range of normalcy, again, Dad conveys the depth of his wonder by declaring in a voice filled with awe, “Just look at her.  Isn’t she something!

At that point, every person in the room, who had witnessed Dad’s naked adoration of my mom, repeatedly, passes an amused glance from one to another, until Dad, growing self-aware, realizes why his ‘audience’ is chuckling.  Then he “busts out laughing” too.

This scenario did not ensue solely when my parents were attired in formal finery.  This was Dad’s natural reaction whenever Mom appeared, wearing a Peter Pan collar, pedal pushers and flats.

Thus did I grow up watching the regenerative powers of magnetic attraction, which had intuitively drawn Dad toward Mom at the dance where they’d first met in the spring of 1941.  And, all my mother had to do to cast the siren’s spell over her husband’s heart for the next 60 years was—walk into the room ...