[K][T] and Family Ch. 01

He was born in Westphalia, near Dortmund. His family was what some would call gentry—related to the noble houses, but not officially acknowledged. He was an honor student, with a degree in Mathematics from the storied University at Jena. He was quite taken with Jo, considering her to be quite Teutonic, in spite of her mixed British-Irish heritage. The interesting reference was to Wagner, almost certainly meaning Brünnhilde. Heady stuff.

As both head of household and groom, I extended the invitation. This was entirely proper and rather formal. Herr Gunter was being treated to all the forms. For his part, he was comfortable with that. When he commented that he had met Sheila, several things came into focus. I looked forward to his meeting Gerald. Which raised an interesting point.

After I signed off, I told Jo that she would the one to tell Gerald. This earned me a laugh from Sheila and a dirty look from Jo, not that she would pass on the dare. Instead, she did a Sheila and pulled on a role—so much so that I accused Sheila of coaching. Sheila responded that Jo had learned to stand upright. In typical Sheila fashion, that took some thinking to unravel. Jo beat me to it, smiling broadly. I looked at Siobhan, standing tall and straight, and realized I had been bested again. If she was not so humble, Sheila would be a real pain in the ass.

Working through the arcana of Sheila's compliment put me behind in the conversation. It was time for some dance instruction. I asked if they needed music. Sheila looked at me as if I were a bit slow. It was not my night. I headed into the house to find a portable stereo and suitable music. This took a while, but I never wondered what Sheila and Jo were doing while I was gone.

I was quite correct. When I returned with the old pipe bomb (my nickname for a cylindrical jam box), Sheila was walking Jo through the basic box steps. Jo would not think she was doing well, but I could see that her adolescent classes had not been wholly wasted. I began to clap a beat. Things went that way for a few minutes, then Sheila pushed me forward.

I had none of Sheila's attributes—patience, experience nor the ability make adjustments in real time. At first things did not go badly. However, Jo was not comfortable. She began to fight my lead. Eventually she froze completely. I think Jo said scheiss, which would mean that it was Herr Gruber she was fighting, not me. Whatever the reason, Sheila called a halt. We had still not used the music, but Jo picked up the player when she left.

Finally, for the first time in what seemed like days, I had a chance for some quality with my fiancée. As usual, Sheila wanted to do something odd. Bowing to the inevitable, we went up to Security.

It was well into the second shift, so no one Sheila had formally met was on duty. That did not stop them from rolling out the carpet. Sheila had done two very important things—she had the boss' ear, meaning Gerald, and she had brought recognition and toys. All this was very familiar to me, but I had underestimated the impact. I could not say about the rest of the staff, but Security loved Sheila.

Once again, it was my turn to stand and wait. Sheila unerringly picked out Damion, the shift supervisor, who showed her the feeds to the new hookups. Since these were the cameras from Sheila's studio, she needed no introduction to their capacities, just the interface. In short order, Damion was joined by every tech in the room, watching Sheila parse the day's feeds. I had to get Damion's attention so that he could move people back to monitoring the facility.

It only took about fifteen minutes. In that time, Sheila added another group of converts to her growing flock. When the photo printer whirred, I could tell it was almost time to move on. It was a picture of Sheila guiding Jo through the box step. Somehow it captured both Jo's growing confidence and her vulnerability. Sheila came across as kind, patient and full of positive expectations. It was a profound portrait of both of them. How did Sheila do that?

Our next stop was the old house. This puzzled me for a moment, til I figured out that Sheila was going to the second floor, where the Amish were moving in. When we reached the top of the stairs, a boy of about ten or eleven stopped running and stared at us. I gestured for him to come forward. He was looking very sheepish as he came to stand before us. I smiled to myself, but tried not to let it show. Instead I ticked some names off on my fingers, "Elder Neufeld, Frau Neufeld, Herr Yoder, Frauline Schaeffelker. Bitte." The boy dashed off.

It turned out that Elder Josiah and his wife were just up the hall, but Evaine was in the servant quarters on the third floor and all the Yoders were down at the boathouse. I should have expected that part. I greeted Elder Neufeld, ignoring Sheila and his wife. I asked how things were going, as if the two women were not there.

The conversation was not without difficulty. My German is largely business oriented and quite modern. Amish German is both a dialect and frozen when they emigrated in the 1700s. The same was true of his English. We were still dealing with generalities when the boy came up with Evaine. I asked the boy's name—Eli Lapp. I thanked him and said that I would visit Herr Yoder in the morning. Elder Neufeld shooed the boy away.

The three women drew aside and began talking. That was the important discussion, so I engaged the Elder in more general conversation. He was very impressed with the amount of work that had been done. Naturally, the Amish boys could have done it better. I told him that much still needed to be done and it was more small work than for large teams. If the boys and girls wished to earn pocket money, such work would be available for the older ones. However, I would be obligated to pay them directly. Elder Neufeld was familiar with child labor laws.

Presently, Sheila indicated that she had heard enough. I thanked the Elder for his time and wished him good sleep. Sheila embraced Evaine Schaeffelker, then moved to my side. You could write a manual on demure from her posture. Interestingly, Frau Neufeld picked up on it, but Elder Neufeld did not. I resolved to do something nice for the ladies. It looked like they were going to earn it.

We took our leave and went back through my version of the rabbit hole. At the door, Sheila turned back and looked over the now presentable main hallway. She seemed to come to a decision, then turned back toward our room. I did not need to be a mind reader to know what that entailed. We were going to make the old house modern. It would give her a hobby.

That said, I was not looking forward to moving out of my bedroom.