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“David,” I said, “rushing into marriage is not meeting someone one year, becoming engaged the next year, and marrying her the following year. Rushing into marriage is meeting someone in February, seeing him a few times in between, and marrying him in July.” But since his father’s and my marriage has worked out just fine over the last fifty years, it’s hard for me to argue against “rushing into marriage.”
As I said earlier, I was all set to go to Yale Divinity School after my four years in Japan when a fellow missionary persuaded me to go to Union Seminary in New York City instead. I was a bit terrified at the thought of going from rural Japan to the metropolis of New York, but it turned out to be a life-changing year. I lived in an apartment on the campus with four other women students and we were a wonderfully congenial bunch. Four of us had been out of school doing other things before we came back for Union degrees, so at the advanced age of twenty-nine, I was grateful to be living with grown-ups and not fresh-faced college graduates.
At the orientation session all entering students were asked to take personality tests—to see if we were fit for the work for which we were preparing—and told that if we wanted to have a session with one of the deans about the results, we were welcome to make an appointment to do so. It seemed like a great opportunity to find out about all my hidden personality defects, so I immediately signed up for a session with the Dean of Women to go over my profile.
Dean Craig was one of the world’s choice people. She was very reassuring about the state of my mental health, which she declared hardy, but there was one thing there that puzzled her. “The profile,” she said, “indicates that you have some difficulty relating to men. I found this hard to believe, so I made a point in watching you in the refectory, and I noticed you always head for a table where there are no male students. Don’t you like men?”
College graduation day with Hazel.
“Yes, theoretically,” I said, “but they don’t seem to like me. My last three serious boyfriends all dumped me.”
“Are you interested in being married?” she asked.
“Well, yes,” I said, “but I love my work in Japan, and I’m not eager to be hurt again.”
She gently suggested that for the last four years, I had been pretty isolated from Americans, especially eligible young men. I needed practice in just being comfortable around the opposite sex. Why didn’t I begin by sitting at a table in the refectory where there were at least some men to talk with while I ate.
I made the mistake of sharing my session with Dean Craig with my apartment mates, who couldn’t help teasing me about my “practice sessions” at mealtimes. I began to date at Union, and enjoyed myself, but they were all practice sessions. There wasn’t anyone that I was reall
y interested in as a prospective mate. I was all set to return to Japan as the stereotypical single lady missionary—like Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen, though not nearly as thin.
Then in February I got a phone call from a professor’s wife. There were two young ministers at her door who were at the end of their two-week continuing education seminar and hoping for an evening of bridge before they headed back to their parishes. Her husband was out of town, so she was wondering if there were women in our apartment who’d like to play. I didn’t play bridge, but Beverly and Meribeth did, and they were delighted for a chance to entertain the young ministers.
When the two men arrived, my friends were in their rooms primping a bit, and so I answered the door and stayed to chat until Beverly and Meribeth emerged and the bridge game could begin. I started to take my leave, when one of them asked if I’d like to stay and learn how to play. No, I said, I needed to study. At just about that time my major professor, who lived across the hall, knocked on the door and asked me if I was free to walk to the deli with him. He was extremely busy, and this was the only time he knew of that we could consult about my thesis. So I left the bridge party, had my thesis consultation, came back, said good night to all, and went to my room to work.
Early the next morning the phone rang. The caller identified himself as John Paterson, one of the two bridge-playing ministers. I presumed he’d called to speak to Beverly or Meribeth, but no, he wanted to speak to me. He wanted to ask me to have lunch with him. Well, as you know, I needed practice, so I said yes and met him at the appointed time in the refectory. We had lunch and, as I recall, a perfectly casual conversation, and when it was over, he asked me if I’d take a walk. He was a pleasant, good-looking young man, and I could always use more practice, so I said yes again.
Now, I can’t relate the exact words. I think I went into a state of shock as this near stranger explained that he had to leave to go back to Buffalo that evening, but that—what on earth was it he said? Anyhow, I was sure from what he said that this young, very handsome young man that I had hardly met, had decided he wanted to marry me. Needless to say, I thought he had lost his mind.
I’m not sure what prompted me in my weekly letter home to mention quite casually that I had had lunch with a young Presbyterian minister from Buffalo. My mother rushed over to her best friend’s house with the terrible news. “Katherine has gotten involved with a minister from Buffalo.” “Well, that’s wonderful,” Helen said. “If Katherine marries him, she’ll stay in this country and won’t go back to Japan alone.” “But I’ve been to Japan,” my mother said. “I’ve never been to Buffalo.” I was still considering John nuts. I mean, I was never the girl that all the boys fall for, but Mother, apparently, was already on John’s wavelength.
Beginning as soon as John got back to Buffalo on Tuesday, I was barraged by phone calls and letters from the handsome stranger. My apartment mates couldn’t believe what had happened, and many wry comments about my successful practice sessions were thrown about. I was still convinced that this John Paterson (I soon learned there was only one t in his name) was out of his mind. He would call and I would answer the phone and hear this strange New England voice. Growing up in the South, to me the cultivated Southern voice has always been beautiful to the ear, and this Yankee speech seemed totally alien. If I were to marry him, I thought, all my children would talk like Yankees. It was impossible to contemplate. Besides, he was far too handsome. How could I trust any man that good-looking?
In addition to the letters and phone calls, there were the visits. Between the middle of February when we met and the end of March, John came to see me. He’d catch the midnight bus from Buffalo after his Sunday duties were done, spend Monday in New York courting me, and catch the midnight bus back so as to be on the job Tuesday morning. He was tired, and I was frantically trying to get my work done for school, so these visits were far from idyllic.
In March he suggested that I come to Buffalo to see him during my Easter break. I did not walk, I ran to see Dean Craig. “This crazy man wants me to come to see him in Buffalo!”
To my surprise, Dean Craig thought it was a good idea.
“But if I come he’ll think I’m ready to marry him.”
“I thought you said you’d like to get married.”
“Well, yes, but I don’t even know him.”
“Well, how did you plan to get to know him?”
I explained that I was due to go back to Japan after graduation. We could write and stuff and then after I got to know him . . .
“Katherine,” she said, “John is ready to get married. If you go back to Japan, you’ll never see him again.” I knew she was right. I couldn’t get to know him unless I went, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t scared to death at the idea of spending a week on his turf.
So it was with Dean Craig’s encouragement and my stomach in knots that I took the bus to Buffalo in April. We were married in July. Just a note about the actual proposal. When he asked me to marry him that Easter, John said that he knew I was a strong woman with many gifts, and he wanted to promise me that he would never stand in the way of my exercising those gifts. As I’ve said before, he didn’t know when he said those words that he would be creating a Frankenstein monster, but despite the books and awards and notoriety, he’s always been my chief supporter and has never stood in my way.
When we’d been married for enough years to be the parents of four lively children, we were living in Takoma Park, Maryland. Dean Craig had moved to Washington after her retirement, and we saw her a number of times before her too-early death. She confessed to me that in 1962, after she had urged me to go to Buffalo, she was seized with the fear that she might have done the wrong thing. All her training in counseling was of the indirect school. A counselor was never to prod a client on a particular course—simply help her to see the alternatives and let her make her own choice. She had never met John and she really knew nothing about him. So while I was in Buffalo, she went to the confidential files for 1953–56 and looked up John Barstow Paterson, and to her immense relief found nothing but raves.
In 1967 when we were applying to adopt our daughter Mary, the social worker did individual interviews with John and me. “Why did you marry your husband?” she asked. I was a bit taken aback and fumbled for an answer. It wouldn’t be quite true that I had been madly in love—I hardly knew the fellow at the time. “Well,” I said. “He asked me, and I liked him a lot.”
It seemed a pretty puny answer regarding a person whom I now really and truly loved. I couldn’t wait to hear John’s answer. “What did you say when she asked you why you married me?” I asked. He replied, “I said I married you because I wanted to marry a grown-up, not somebody I’d have to raise.” Whether I was worthy of this compliment might be debatable, but I still treasure it.
