Without declaration

Did you happen to read about the discovery of a 59-page letter summarizing many of the composer Mahler's most intimate relationships? Yowzers: while some of the language used by the author of the letter, a viola player and friend of Mahler's named Natalie Bauer-Lecher, tends towards the euphemistic, some of it is downright steamy. Take, for instance, her description of her own affair with Mahler:

"As we were immured in the very narrow room and isolated from all the world in fervently animated Scheherazade-like tales, up until the graying of the morning, we unfolded our entire lives before each other. Without declaration, question, and vow, our psyches and physiques melted into each other."

Well. As the critic Max Graf wrote, of Mahler's Tristan, such passion had been unheard of in Vienna. The leaf, perhaps, does not fall far from the tree.

Anyway: here at Half Step, we like to keep things more solidly in the G range. And yet, despite such basic resolutions, even we sometimes stumble onto declarations of passion. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, we arrived at Bolton Hill Nursery to learn that Cleo had married one of her classmates, in an elaborate ceremony that included an exchange of rings. In piecing things together, through the varied accounts offered by Cleo, a classmate and a teacher, we learned that Cleo had told the boy (a fine young lad named Oliver) that she loved him; he'd responded by offering that he liked her head. And then he failed to show up for camp the very next day.

But Oliver's unintended treachery (I assume his family was on vacation) was nothing compared to my own, in Cleo's eyes. Deep in another princess story the other day, I thought I would point out that princess can, after all, marry princesses - at least in 15 countries around the world. And princes: well, they too can choose. Yeah, said Cleo, and I'm going to marry you and Mom. Well: while I liked the feeling behind the thought, I wasn't sure how that would work, exactly, and - surely pushing my role as source of facts about the world a step too far - noted that the list of countries acknowledging those unions would be even shorter. And Cleo, bless her heart, burst into momentary tears. But I just want to marry you, she said, crying into my lap.

I can't say that our physiques melted into each other. In fact, they didn't. But we did make up quickly, and, recomposed, headed out to pick tomatoes in the garden, back in the world, far from immured, and delighted with each other's company.