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To give a more rounded idea of the young Karina, having described previously described her having a Sturm und Drang moment, here is a reference to a letter from me in Germany to my parents and excerpts from some charming post-national service, pre-wedding letters to my mother from her when about to leave for Newcastle and our wedding.
Throughout our marriage Karina would be the opposite of the conventional image of the diligent Hausfrau, and I described in my letter the tail-end of the disciplinary domestic upbringing against which she subsequently rebelled and which helped form her character.
I described how Frau Theis “well-meaningly complains about something long-suffering Karina has or has not done every 30 seconds because she hasn’t grown into the perfect-housewife, conventional nice girl” that her mother wished for… (Interestingly to me that in those more formal times, I used the term Frau Theis rather than her first name.)
“If Karina were your daughter Mam, you would tell people: “Karina’s quite good really. She’s certainly not the perfect little housewife but she helps me quite a lot. She does her own room out each day, helps with the dishes quite often, dusts around for me sometimes and goes the messages when I ask her.”
What made me angry
“If the girl does anything unorthodox, Frau Theis gives her the most horrible look. The stupidity of it makes me angry. I asked Karina if I should point out to her mother, calmly and as an outsider…” that the niggling and nagging wears her down.
“But Karina said it would only hurt her mother, who believes she is acting in the best possible way… If I said anything it would bring home with too much force that she was losing her and as long as Mutti could complain about and to her, she was still her daughter.
“Karina says little because she loves her mother and knows she’s a good mother in many ways.”
To give an example: One evening Karina was stitching up my raincoat and sewing some buttons. I was sitting beside her, and we had that feeling of happiness that you and Dad know one can have doing almost nothing beside the person you love.
“Then Frau and Herr Theis started complaining about the time Karina was taking. I hated them at that moment and angrily, but in a jocular manner, told them more or less to shut up. They did, but the atmosphere was spoilt.”
Charmingly poor english
I introduced Karina’s letters to my mother in some earlier writings thus: Even before arriving in Newcastle for our wedding Karina inadvertently laid the groundwork for her wholehearted acceptance by my family with the following letters to my mother in charmingly poor English.
“Mike told me about you and yur familiage and I can see tht you live together good, because I think that you accept that every person in a familiage must be an indiviual person but with the feeling that he or she is not alone. So I’m very glad to think that I may be fitting to your familiage and one of my most important desires is that you all will not be disappinted of me.”
After receiving photos of my family:
“Now it is difficult for me to see you as my mother-in-law. Please, you must undestand me right. On the photos you seem so young and full of life, and also your husand, that I’ve a feeling to become a very good friend of you. Especially when I think on all this what Mike told me about you. Now my mother can see tha she isn’t the only young and beautiful womans.”
