Having read Bender’s Eternal love story, I found it intriguing how it portrays Lena as a naive young girl who has fallen in love with Bob, a truck driver at Goodwill. Interestingly, the two lovers handle their stay in the same building with Lena’s parents Mrs. Ella and Mr. Lou (Bender 117). Mrs. Ella is obsessed with her daughter that she does not want to allow her to spend the night with her newly married husband, Mr. Bob, for the first two days of their honeymoon. During that period, Mrs. Ella tried to prepare her daughter for her marriage and what she ought to expect as someone’s wife (Bender 117). This somehow reminded me of how often mothers tend to be overprotective of their daughters. The way she interrogates her daughter clearly indicates that Lena is taken to be naive though her responses show that she at least had made some escapades with Bob.
Moreover, the mother makes inquiries about Bob through the calls she made and is informed that Bob had undergone a vasectomy when he was a teenager (Bender 114). This is interesting because despite Ella getting such crucial information, she opts to keep quiet and not share it with anyone else, not even her husband. It indicates that Ella seemed to have accepted Bob as her prospective son-in-law. However, it is disappointing that the night when both Lena and Bob spend the night together after their escapades, they acted ignorantly by rushing to their parents, and Lena complained to her mother about the presence of blood in her genitals. Through their ignorance, Ella understood that they had had sex. Also, I wonder what exactly Ella was preparing her daughter about when it is depicted at the end of the story that Lena never knew how to cook or wash (Bender 132). Nevertheless, the parents seem optimistic that the two lovebirds will get along well without any problems despite those loopholes.