Dear Marion,

Just now I finished painting white the three
bathroom cabinets in which are stored toothpaste
and brushes and the other paraphernalia on which
one relies to control the various emanations which
forever jeopardize social relationships. I used a
latex-based primer, not white wash, but white wash
is the proper term for what I sought to achieve,
and the while I was spreading white paint onto the
rust that had accumulated over the past 58 years,
I plotted the far more difficult whitewash job to
cleanse myself of - or to conceal - the loathesome
stains on my spirit that you have discovered.

It's not my job or my purpose to advise concerning
or to engage in psychoanalysis; but serious thought has
serious implications the pursuit of which is a matter
of your discretion. The analysis of the comparison
of the chaperonage of the fiancees with the chaperonage
of the great aunt is the easy part. That comparison
is contemptuous of and trivializes the emotional and
intellectual experience - Erleben - of the lovers,
and it misconceives and misrepresents the emotional
and intellectual bond between the adult and the child.
"True" marriage entails a mysterious, awesome transformation
of the human character, at times with glorious, sometimes
with catastrophic, but usually with mixed results. The
immature great aunt whom you describe is herself a child,
who in her spare time is playing at being a parent in a
manner analogous to that in which school children in
http://home.earthlink.net/~ernstmeyer/notes/ackmedsch.html
spend school recess playing doctor.  There is no future in
seducing children with activities "that they will find
exciting and fun". Whether or not such efforts are
"chaperoned" by the child's parents is beside the point.

 Jochen