What Do Women Want?

Until her marriage, my grandmother taught high school Latin and Greek. Married women were not allowed to preside over Hamilton, Ohio high school classrooms in that first decade of the 20th century, so, having gained a husband and lost a profession, Grandmother Lizzie tutored privately. Grandfather Charles taught high school math.
My grandparents met on a train, traveling to a teachers' conference in Los Angeles. Neither of them had travelled out of Ohio before. Lizzie was thrilled, snapping pictures with her little Kodak at every whistle stop, sending silly or scenic postcards each time she located a post box. And meeting Charles. That apparently thrilled her, too, though no one quite knew why. Charles was ten years older than she, he was dour at the best of times, with his basset hound face and taciturn manners. He dressed functionally. He was in no way articulate. Maybe the enchantment of riding the rails lent him a luster that would not have appeared, had they met in a Hamilton cafeteria. Whatever, Lizzie fell in love and dogged the poor man with her notes and letters and general positivism and hopefulness for four years, until he married her. To shut her up, one supposes.
Instead, she started in having children. John. Jean. Robert, called Bob. Lizzie called them Johnjeanbob. The boys looked like their father. Jean looked like she was made of twigs, hair as fine as dandelion fluff. They were teachers' kids and they hung around together. Maybe the boys had a friend or two. John played a mean game of tennis. Bob was a prankster. Jean couldn't seem to get the hang of friendship. She was good at reading and math, though, and started kindergarten when she was 4. A year or so later, she began playing the violin.
Jean left for college right after she turned 17. By then, she had substitute taught her father's classes when he fell ill with a winter flu. Charles hoped she would major in math. Both parents expected her to focus her education on teaching. Instead, she majored in geology. She learned to swim because it was a requirement for graduation. She fell in love with a tug boat pilot, who had a girl back home. She fell in love with a fraternity boy, who danced and sang and showed no inclination to work for a living. She got her degree, moved back home and started teaching. And met my father, at the first faculty meeting.
Dave was handsome, he was stylish, he was trendy. He danced, he painted, he sang. When he drank, he drank too much. He sent his students to her room with notes throughout the school day and bought her Coca-Colas after school. He took her to movies. He performed with her at her violin recital. And then, after two years of flirting, he announced that he was going to New York, to study fine arts at Columbia. And then he went.
He wrote her every day, thinking of you, he'd say, not much else. Instead of coming home for the summer, Dave got a job at a summer theatre on Cape Cod. Jean took a week to visit him, ate her first batch of fried clams and was violently ill for several days. She had also applied and been accepted into a geology masters' program at Columbia. Soon enough, they were both living in New York. And she was living in a small apartment with three other young women, loony and moonstruck, having more fun than she had ever had, standing in line for last-minute half-priced tickets for every Broadway show. And patiently waiting for Dave to propose. To be continued. . .