2020 has us all on edge. When it can’t seem to get any worse, it does. From murder hornets to wild fires, locusts, explosions, Covid_19, and now losing RBG? We know better than to believe that it’s all over. We’re locking our doors, looking over our shoulders and second guessing things that wouldn’t have been given a second thought a year ago. Uncertainty is stressful. 2020 is stressful.
A few days ago, my grandmother let her guard down. She is a smart woman, but she made a mistake. She is severely targeted by scammers. Honestly, it’s ridiculous and disgusting that on top of everything else, we have to be wary of scammers. But here we are, and a few days ago the damn scammers won. I hope they rot in hell. Covid hell would actually be preferable. Maybe perpetual Covid Hell limbo. With locusts and murder hornets. I digress.
With frozen bank accounts, wires ripped out of walls, no landline or WiFi, a haywire computer and a compromised Apple ID, all I could think to do was get her out of that condo.
My husband picked her up, and it took a solid hour after arrival at our house to see her shoulders relax, and the tight look of concern in her brow dissolve. We talked a little about the mess she was in, and how much my mother was helping her put the pieces back together again, but then we moved on, and the most epically beautiful thing happened. She safely let her guard down. Finally.
I’ve heard plenty of stories about her childhood in Germany, and meeting my Grampa, and immigrating to the US, but I’ve never heard the stories all together, in order, with all of the little nuances. Over dinner, we listened in awe to just part of her story.
She grew up in Göppingen, a small town in Southern Germany during WWII. She was the middle of three sisters, one seven years younger (probably an, “oops”) and the other sister three years older. Her mother apparently babied her younger sister out of guilt for not giving her the best nutrition as a baby during the war. They were lucky to never go hungry, as her parents owned a restaurant in town and raised chickens in the backyard. She said she never once tended the chickens because her father always took took care of them, but the small backyard was always full of chicken shit.
When she was about seven years old, her father sent his wife and their two girls out of town to seek shelter from the Americans on a friends farm. One night, the women were hiding in a cellar beneath the barn and the American soldiers found them. One by one they crawled out of the cellar at gunpoint with their hands in the air. The soldiers were looking for German soldiers and ultimately let the women go. She will never forget that night.
At age 16 or so she began she process of trying to emigrate. It was a lengthy endeavor and she needed an American sponsor. There was a group of Americans who frequented her parents restaurant so often that eventually one of the gentleman’s parents sponsored her so that she could come to the US. During that process, a young fighter pilot who conducted the choir on the base nearby was asked to conduct the Sunday church services. He was reluctant because he wanted to travel on the weekends, but said he would take the job if they would provide a soprano soloist. My Grandmother is that soloist. He took one look at her and she instantly got the job. She even took over conducting sometimes so that he could still travel.
She left Germany a couple of years later and traveled alone on a ship to New Jersey where her sponsor family was located. Before leaving Germany, Grampa had offered to help her ship some of her sheet music because she was only allowed so much luggage on the boat. She left many boxes of music with him. She exchanged letters with my Grampa from NJ, and in one, he asked her if she could imagine making the US her home. Was he implying something? Here’s a shocker: While Grampa was still overseas, another man proposed to her! She turned him down!
Grampa was finally due to arrive back in the states and she went to the airport to greet him. She saw him step off the plane and through the crowd she watched him walk straight up to another woman and kiss her! Her heart sank. Was he married this whole time!? He ended up finding her in the crowd and she was immediately introduced to his sister. Haha.
She traveled back and forth from NJ to MA on the train to visit him frequently and one day while driving with him down the highway, he pulled over and proposed. On the side of the highway. I knew my Grampa to be thoughtful, and always prepared with jewelry. Apparently those qualities hadn’t developed yet, because he proposed without a ring! My Grandmother is known by many for her love of gorgeous, unique jewelry so the fact that her husband proposed ring-less is amusing to me. The fact that she was un-phased by this, and also that during his proposal he announced that he wanted to be a teacher and therefore they would never be rich, is one of my favorite parts of their love story. Remember all that sheet music she had given to him to bring back to the US? She snuck her trousseau into those boxes. A trousseau is the personal possessions of a bride usually including clothes, accessories, and household linens and wares. Basically, she knew he was the one way back then. A love story for the books.
I could spend the new few days writing down the rest of the stories she told us yesterday evening. I’ll save the part about him bombing her hometown, and the one with the bullet holes in the staircase for another post. But I enjoyed it immensely. And I am reminded that we all must find the right moments to let our guard down. With everything going on in the world it is even more difficult to know when and where it’s safe to feel at ease. I challenge you to be the person that someone else can let their guard down around. Be someone else’s safe place. I challenge you to step slightly out of your comfort zone to do something unexpected for someone you know, and then again for someone you’ve never met and will never meet. Send your Grandmother flowers for no reason at all. Write a letter to an old teacher who made an impact on your life. Call a friend on the phone. Fill the tank for someone wearing scrubs. Tell a Mom at the grocery store that she’s doing an amazing job. Tell your friends how much you love them. I promise you it will not go unnoticed, and I promise you it’ll make your day as much as it makes theirs.
But mostly, I challenge you to ask your elders about their lives and their stories. Let them take their time. Write it down. It certainly helped put 2020 into perspective for me.
*Special thanks to my mother for calling in all the King’s horses and all the King’s (wo)men to put Humpty Dumpty (computer, wires, bank accounts, etc) together again. You da real MVP.
