Late last night, long after the dinner dishes had been washed and put away, my grandma prepared some peppermint tea and shared the story of how she met grandpa. My grandparents just celebrated 64 years together last month.After the war, my grandpa returned to Rotterdam after being a prisoner of war in Germany. He was 21. My grandma, too, lived in Rotterdam at the time - although they didn't know each other yet. Both of them attended the local young men's and women's Christian clubs in Holland: de Christelijke Jonge Mannen Vereniging (CJMV) and de Christelijke Jonge Vrouwen Vereniging (CJVV). These two groups were the Dutch equivalents of today's YMCA.
One day, the CJMV and the CJVV decided to meet at one of many Dutch "victory festivals" in the wake of WWII. My grandma stumbled upon two friends of hers who happened to be dating at the time. While making small talk, she glanced around at the bubbling crowd around her.
"All of a sudden, from across the room, I saw your grandpa. And I knew right then and there, I had to meet him!" my grandma recalled with twinkling eyes.
She said he was impeccably dressed in nice slacks, a crisp, white shirt, and a tie. "The other guys at the festival weren't wearing such a nice suit... he had come from work, of course."
Being the bold lady she was (and still is!), grandma confidently requested that her friend introduce her to my grandpa (the two guys were in CJMV together). Soon after, the four of them began to take afternoon walks up and down the main streets in Rotterdam - the Coolsingel and Hoogstraat. After the war, there weren't any theatres, cafés, or large places to gather with friends: they had all been damaged when the city was bombed. To pass the time in good company, one spent the day strolling the streets.
One time, the dating couple broke off from Lena and Johann (my grandparents) and my grandma and grandpa walked along just the two of them.
"We just talked...about anything, and everything. Every now and then, we'd run into people we knew and we would stop and talk together."
My grandma didn't want to get too close to grandpa because she had trained her heart not to do so. My grandma was born with only one hand. At the time, "being different" like that wasn't widely accepted. Some boys thought that her condition was hereditary and didn't even want to associate with her (how appalling). Grandma waited for assurance that grandpa accepted her exactly as she was before she let her heart love him as more than a friend.
When I asked grandpa about grandma's first sighting of him at the festival, he responded, "I was just standing there, minding my own business..."
Half-joking (or maybe completely serious?), grandma attributed the entire success of their meeting and marriage to her keen eyesight. "It's only by luck that we ended up together. Good thing I spotted him all the way over there!"
Hilarious.
