by THE BEETDIGGER - thebeetdigger@downtownweb.com

Once upon a time I fell in love with a beautiful woman who was a sister missionary, and I was her district leader, and gave her many interviews; and of my last two zone leaders, one later confessed to me of his love for her after I had reported the same to him, and the other married her. The mission president and I discussed the greatness of her qualities after my confession, and he transferred me when I was already planned to leave. Later he considered sending her to another mission, for too many elders fell in love with her. Once, one of her converts confided to me of the sadness of his love for her, and I consoled him even as I also was passionate in secret.

Of all the beautiful women I have known in my life, she is one of two that I consider most beautiful. She was short of stature, but possessed of a charisma that entwined all around her as her friends or hopeful lovers. Her black hair rested gracefully on her shoulders, and she had poignant eyes. Were I a New World Pygmalion, and had once converted her from stone, perhaps then her original may have been the Venus de Medici, only with bronzed skin. For all her beauty that once made me seem to die in front of her, and that still charms my memory, I recognize that some of my greatest heroes and heroines in history were almost hideous to look upon; but to have been able to converse with their minds and hearts would have truly been a paradise to me.

She once inquired where I was to live after my mission, and thought I'd make a great father. I felt that with enough faith I could have her one day in my arms, but our only embrace was of farewell. No tongue can express how a man feels when he is losing his love. Shortly after her homecoming I had seen her a number of times with other returned missionaries, and knew the end had come. I waited a whole year for her, patiently endured from hope to hope, and now this. Words cannot tell what exquisite agony filled my bosom one night, lying upon my bed, and the waves of despair overcoming me. For a few moments my body seemed to shake and tremble. I knew that I must express my feelings to her or die. That was the only hope for consolation that I could then feel. I wrote a letter, telling all from the beginning, and mailed it the next day. The day after I called her, and she said to come to her house. I trudged ever so thoughtfully in the night's twilight, emerging through the snowdrifts and the thick snow falling. Without much ado after I came to the house, she invited me in and we sat ourselves down by the fireplace facing one another, and casting furtive glances and pensive thoughts one side to the other. I was one of her closest friends, yet she never imagined what my desires had been, she said. Then said I to her, "Tu eres una joya preciosa para mi. Espero que siempre pueda yo probar mi amor para ti." She looked at me with large dark eyes, without much speaking. I could only put my arms around her in parting. After three more meetings with her in town, I saw her no more.

I have since reflected much on what the woman's influence over me had been, how I was the better man and missionary for having known her. I feel that I was sufficiently judicious in my control of my sentiments so that it didn't inhibit, only magnified, my missionary labor. These thoughts still remain distinct in my memory. I still think about how memorably pleasurable had been my mission; never to be forgotten were those days.

This act of remembering
is never to be forgotten
by me, and by those who hear my story
because each with listening ear
may understand a part of me
is in them; and there is a part of me
they do not understand.

My father and I went on a scientific trip to Poland in 1989 (I only came for fun), and we arrived there the very day that Poland officially reverted to democracy. I toured through the city Krakow to the south, and the beautiful mountains that bordered what was then Czechoslovakia. The guards were there by the river, as when I saw the towers manning the once East German border, where flowers marked those who were shot while fleeing. With so many others I watched with astonishment on TV later that year when they danced on the Berlin wall, and the masses marched on the Romanian tyrant's palace. In the fields in southern Poland horses drew carts loaded with produce, and men and women gathered bundles of wheat. It was a beautiful two weeks, and at the end a local professor told my father about a girl of Krakow who wished to practice her English with a young visitor. I obliged. We were to rendezvous at a side street, and it was raining hard. I finally met her; we were together for only three hours.

Out here in these burning fields
I'm remembering a young girl
I was younger than she
"In two days I'm seventeen" I said
And she replied "For twenty-six
days I've been seventeen,
it's raining let's stop somewhere."
We two walked in medieval town
to a church where east and west meet
in staned-glass pictures of saints
and icons of holy prophets.

We seemed to walk aimlessly through the city. She had a cold, and I was concerned that our time outside would further irritate it; but she insisted that we continue the walk and talk. She took me by surprise-I was truly charmed by her pleasant countenance and conversation-she took my breath away, it seemed. I tried to explain my "vacation" to her but she finally understood it as "holiday." There was much she didn't understand, but that of course didn't matter. We visited a cathedral, she crossed herself inside: I thought it strange. We also visited some stores.

"Why do your lips mutter
and you seal your hands across your chest?"
I asked and wondered to myself
You are so superstitious
if only you believed like I believe
But I'm beginning to understand you.
In another place she asks
"Do you like this music?"

It was only a short, almost pathetic, time spent together in the rain. Yet it was to mark so pointedly in my life. We kept in contact for another four years. I no longer believe anymore in love at first sight. But in my memory I somehow loved her when I first saw her in the city. This was a threshold in my life with regards to love. She was the first girl I really loved. From the square in Krakow I divided from my former life with the realization and potential of real love.

From behind she touches me
She touches me, you touched me!
If only you knew what means this moment to me
to me, a faded dew drop in time.
That day was so gloomy
a reflection of me.
You made me, I thought
although I never understood
whether feelings of you, or you
was it that made me live.

After I parted from her, just as the sky and weather were dark, so a miasmic darkness seemed to creep into my soul. Of another faith, and to be thousands of miles away, I would never see her again.

That day was so overcast
my eyes as calm as a storm
as silent as silent, dark ghettos
of Jews once lived, now gone.
She left that day
the city slept, needed me no more.
Already she was no form
that once clung to me an instant
but shadow, like dark-skinned gypsies
beg my money from dark alleyways.

Two other moments in Krakow stand out. In the night before we left, we walked to a restaurant. On the way, gypsies came out of the shadows and begged us for our money. The other moment was when we passed by the Jewish ghetto. Once thousands of Jews flourished on the very empty street I set my eyes upon; now it was dark, and silent, and gloomy, and it was thought to be haunted. "The city slept." The next morning we traveled by train to Warsaw. I was depressed by the gray, Stalinesque buildings that lined the cityscape. In the evening we stayed at a hotel. In the bathroom I seemed to be wholly given up to tears. My father asked why, I could only give him a less truer answer. It was in bed that I had another trembling experience; the other is mentioned in the former story.

"Will you call me tonight?"
she asks as we part.
I said no, my way
bids me to another place.
We said farewell where I stayed.
Here I am. I'm conscious
my hands lay limp on table
my feet planted on the floor.
But why do I tremble?

When I had said goodbye to her by the institute where my dad worked, she asked if I would visit her in the evening. I said no; the response was instant, as I moved between a quick departure and the pain of another meeting. I said no, but wished my answer was different all the same. She left. My dad was in a meeting, and I sat down by a table to rest and reflect. Both of my hands lay upon the table. My hands and my feet then started to tremble and shake. This carried on for some time, and then I leaped off the table and ran outside. I jumped wildly down the streets of Krakow. I landed solidly on the water puddles, which slashed fully on me and the passerbys. Finally I saw her figure walking in the distance. I could see her darker tresses bouncing on her coat. This is the image that I still retain: it "clung to me an instant," as it were, when she tapped me before on the shoulder at a store. Out of breath I said, "Kasia" (her name): I told her that we ought to correspond.

We wrote one another for four years. In the MTC I sent her a Polish Book of Mormon, which she read in its entirety. I lost contact with her at the end of my mission.