Good story! and neatly told, too, i guess i should mention, since I noticed it.
MY maternal grandmother was, when very young, 15 or 16, in love with a friend of her parents, a socialist, a writer, one N had heard of when she told the story to us, a man in his 40's, who supposedly loved her. They were all part of a socialist/atheist group in Brooklyn, and the story is that Grandma's father founded the first "Museum of Natural History" in NY. Probably was in a classroom in his school (he had a school) or something...
Anyway, this man, whose name N would remember but he's asleep, became involved with my Grandma, who was called Elisabeth then, and not 'Grandma," and her mother found out about it. And forced Grandma to marry Grandpa. Grandma told me that it was out of jealousy. Who knows.
Anyway, Grandma never liked Grandpa. Poor Grandpa. I was terrified of him, myself. But she wasn't afraid, she was just extremely resentful that she'd been forced to marry a man she didn't love, when she loved the other one so much. And she hated her mother forever for that. And fell into a depression as the babies came, and neglected her father, who found out that Grandma's mother, the jealous one, had a lover and hanged himself.
So poor Grandma blamed herself her whole life for her father's death.
When she was very old and railing against her mother, i asked her what she would have done if one of her daughters at 15 or 16 had announced her love for a 40-something man. She had never thought of it that way, strangely enough.
I tried to convince her when she was old and Grandpa was close to death that she had loved him in an important way, even if not in the way she had loved her socialist. It was sad, how much she wanted to believe that.
Who knows. |
