Jens

Jens is Christine’s (my ex-wife)’s father. Does that make him my ex-father-in-law? I guess so.

I met both Jens and Lise (Christine’s mother) when I went to Europe on a business trip after I had met Christine and she moved to California to live with me. Christine called her parents and told them I’d be in Denmark, and Jens said immediately, “Oh, he should come and visit us.” This, despite the fact that Jens didn’t speak much English at the time! I didn’t speak much Danish either, although I had begun to learn the day I got back to California after meeting Christine in France.

Luckily, Lise speaks much better English, so we were not completely lost. They live on Bornholm, an island that requires a 30 minute flight (or an overnight ferry, or a trip through Sweden and another ferry) to get to. I visited them for a weekend.

I think meeting Jens and Lise on my own, before asking Christine to marry me, allowed me to build a separate and strong relationship with them as well as Christine, which I’ve always valued.