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Reunion Vignettes

Alles gut.

GRANDMA LOEWEN

THIS IS HOW THE SCRIPT READS:

You are adopted at birth by a childless couple, and you grow up happily enough in that family. But of course you aren’t ever totally understood. You don’t look like them, and this pains you. They all have blonde hair and blue eyes and short torsos, and you have brown hair and brown eyes and a long torso. You have a talent for drawing that no one else in your family has. Where did it come from? Then one day, when you grow up, you see a television program about birth mothers looking for their birth children. You look up in surprise when you hear a woman with a familiar voice say that she gave birth on your birthdate. She has brown hair and brown eyes and your same cowlick. It’s her! You dial up the talk show and give them some of your personal details, which match the guest’s exactly! You are flown to a land far, far away where you lay eyes on your birth mother on national television. You are astonished (but not really) that she is wearing the exact same sweater as you! The audience oohs and aahs, and the talk show host wipes away tears. A magic wand is waved, and you are now perfectly whole and complete, lacking in nothing. Your birth mother completes you. The reunion completes you completely. And the two of you shall live happily ever after, finishing each other’s sentences and buying each other sweaters.

It’s the basic draft for how people want your reunion story to go. They eat this junk up, latching on to any little detail that would make their version of your story come true. For example, when I mention that Dora is a writer, too, people get weak in the knees. Never mind that she’s a nature writer. (She can be found lying down in bogs, waiting to capture elusive flora and fauna on film. I, on the other hand, have never willingly lain down in a bog.)

Society craves the fairy tale. They hanker for the cowlicks and the sweaters and especially the perfect reunion. On a related note, I read a statistic once that said up to 60 percent of folks polled wished they were adopted. My theory? People want a back door, an escape hatch from their own flawed families. They believe that if they were adopted, they would get a second chance at a family, one with whom their current problems and dysfunctions would vanish. Then they would live happily ever after, fade to black.

I’m here to tell you that this fairy tale is fractured. Reunions almost never work out this perfectly, and often they create almost as much upheaval as they do closure. It’s not all bad; in fact, some wonderful things often come out of connecting those dots. But it’s a total can of worms, and they don’t call it a can of worms for nothing, eh?

July 2006

As if it wasn’t enough to fly alone with my three young children to Winnipeg to visit my dying dad, I decided it seemed like a good idea to spend a night with my birth mother and her family at a cottage on Lake Winnipeg.

Dora was turning sixty and had planned this overnight visit as a special time of bonding and reunion with her daughter, my birth sister, Danica; her grandson (my nephew); and other assorted bio relatives. They would make the drive from Calgary to coincide with our trip to Winnipeg, and we would all spend time together at the cottage.

Below the surface, I was a mess. My father had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer eight months before, and his life was ebbing away. We just didn’t know when. It horrified and wounded me to see my chubby, jovial dad so grey, scarecrow thin, and as weak as a bird. Every day spent with him was precious. Our visit was all too brief, and I felt incredibly guilty leaving my parents at their apartment, at once frantic to get away from the inevitability of death and yet desperate not to leave my dad’s side. But Dora had made a huge effort to put this together. It was important to her. I wanted to please her; I didn’t want to let her down. And my parents were gracious about it. They must have felt strange, bidding their daughter and their grandchildren good-bye as they drove off to form ties with the woman who had relinquished them all thirty-eight years before.

Maybe it was painful and a relief, both. With us gone—even on such an errand—my mum and dad could go back to the shelter of each other without having to pretend things were just swell. I didn’t know that these days were our last with my father. I didn’t know he would be dead within a week. Yes, I would have done things differently if I had known that.

My nerves were frayed long before I’d finished the 100-kilometer drive to the cottage. Twenty-month-old P hated her car seat, the drive, the sun in her eyes. She screamed and whined, writhed and bucked and kicked my seat. At one point, she thrashed so strenuously she actually got herself loose from the car seat and had plopped herself on the floor of the car. I pulled over on the highway, cars and trucks thundering past me, and wrestled her back into her seat, my insides boiling.

With each mile, I geared myself up for what was to come. I would be spending time with Dora and her husband and daughter, as a family unit. My children would meet their biological cousin, Danica’s nine-year-old, for the first time. Dora would meet Phoebe for the first time. How would she treat her?

We would be meeting Aunt Liz, Dora’s sister, a folk dancer who alternately went by the name Lotus. All of us would spend the night together at the cottage like one big happy family.

Dora was waiting on the porch of the cottage. She came out to the car as soon as I had switched off the ignition. “Hello, my darlings!” Dora said effusively as we emerged from the vehicle, the boys smiling shyly at the stranger who was their grandmother. I tried to look serene while extrapolating a screeching baby from her instrument of torture.

Thankfully, the change of scenery and the new faces calmed Phoebe down. She was fascinated by Aunt Liz’s dog and Aunt Liz herself, who was good with kids and blew bubbles with Phoebe on the porch for a good chunk of the afternoon. At that point, I must say, had Aunt Liz suggested she raise Phoebe herself in a tribe of Nordic Polska dancers, I might have handed her over.

Spending a couple of days at the lake was both diverting and unsettling. I had forgotten how beautiful Manitoba beaches were, the sand like powdered sugar. Lake Winnipeg reminded me of Lake Michigan—vast and moody, with no end in sight. The surroundings soothed my frayed nerves, and the earthy smells of lake water and pine trees drifted around me, encouraging me simply to breathe in, breathe out.

Yet this reunion business was bewildering at best. Even as I welcomed the warm embrace of the sun and the comforting sound of the waves, I knew my dad was still dying. The unknown was so terribly unsettling. I’ve since come to realize that it’s sometimes worse to agonize and wonder how a loved one will die than to learn of the actual death itself. All the time we were at the cottage, my conflicting loyalties were pinging inside me like a black box at the bottom of the ocean.

But there was something right, too, about being on that beach. We enjoyed hanging out with Aunt Liz, who was rocking a black bikini. Aunt Liz’s personality was chummy, languid, and loose in the joints. She jangled with bracelets and good vibrations. (Note to self: Folk dancing is obviously good for the stomach, if one’s aunt has a better stomach than her non-folk-dancing niece.)

It felt natural to listen to my biological sister, Danica, tell me about her job and friendships. I had met Danica for the first time several years before, when Dora flew her to Grand Rapids to meet me. With four years between us, Danica looked enough like me for folks at my church and all over town to wonder if we were sisters. She had a keen sense of humor and a natural “aunt quality” of nurturing and fun.

Later, after supper in the cottage, Danica and I took a walk with the boys to get ice cream. Dora and Bill watched Phoebe. I was touched by Dora’s evident love for them all, even Phoebe, who obviously wasn’t her biological grandchild. Bill accepted us converging upon his family with quiet grace. When he rocked Phoebe to sleep and gave her a bottle that night, my heart broke. Her real opa should be the one rocking her to sleep, if his arms had not been too chemo-ravaged to hold her. The incongruity made me ache.

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As we ambled up the wooded path to the ice cream shack, Danica and I talked about everything but my turmoil. I couldn’t have articulated it if I tried. But when we got to the shack, something happened to illuminate the moment.

I spotted a familiar-looking woman around my age, licking her ice cream cone and sitting on a picnic table by the shack. All of a sudden it came to me.

“Are you . . . Tanya? From M.B.C.I?” I asked her.

Tanya and I were casual friends in high school. We had bonded over her dating my stepcousin Willy, the family hottie with piercing blue eyes and white-blond surfer hair.

Taking a few more steps toward the picnic table, I added, “I’m Lori Reimer, or I used to be.”

The woman stood up, recognition flashing in her eyes. “Lori! I can’t believe it!”

I hadn’t seen Tanya in more than twenty years, but I knew that Willy had married someone else. I had left Winnipeg as a college freshman two decades before, so it was startling to run into someone from high school who knew me as spinny, boy-crazy Lori Reimer.

We chatted about kids we used to know and my dreamy cousin Willy. Talk of Willy reminded her of my other stepcousins in the same extended family, whom she had seen earlier in the day.

“You saw them here? Now?” I couldn’t believe it. These people had been my family for twenty-five years. I’d spent many hours of my childhood in the basement of North Kildonan Mennonite Brethren Church, attending the wedding receptions of my older stepcousins. We younger cousins would tear around the church together, exploring nooks and crannies after we had squirmed through the Freiwilliges, the Mennonite wedding open mic time following the meal.[89] That wonderful church basement smelled permanently of coffee and ham buns, the aroma of a thousand Mennonite weddings steeped into the very baseboards.

I had no idea how much these people meant to me until they were gone.

Actually, I left Winnipeg for college at the age of nineteen, and like Anne, I expected everything there to stay the same—all my home-places, rituals, and relatives. I was in for a shock, then, upon learning one Christmas that we no longer gathered together. There had been a rift, growing over the years, between some of my aunts and uncles and their stepsiblings. My dad, ever and always the peacemaker, stayed out of it, other than trying to smooth things over when he could.

Maybe if I lived in Winnipeg, my relationships with my extended family would have continued. But since I came home for only a week or two each year, I had not seen most of my stepcousins in more than a decade.

They were not even relatives through adoption.

Yet as I was reconnecting with Tanya, I had an almost feral urge to find them and claim them. In that strange moment when I felt the Reimer clan stepping back into this reunion with my birth family, a scenario appeared in my mind. I watched myself, clutching my three children, banging on my stepcousins’ cottage door, and begging them to take me in. “You’re my real family,” I declared, just before they enfolded me to their cousinly bosom.

And it would be the truest thing.

My heart beat eagerly in my chest, but I knew to act on my impulses would cause deep offense. I couldn’t do that to Dora and Danica.

So I smiled at my old friend from high school. “Please tell them all hello from me,” I said.

Then I collected my children and some extra napkins, and we made our way back down the beach path, away from my family and toward my flesh-and-blood relatives.

April 2008

I wasn’t asked to be Danica’s bridesmaid, and I was perfectly fine with that. Her relationship with her close friends was much more long-term than her relationship with me, a quasi sister she had met a few years before. Other than three face-to-face visits—including the beach day two years before—we had conversed mostly via e-mail.

Doyle and I had flown into Calgary for the big day, and we showed up a couple of hours before the wedding to lend a hand. (My chief assignment was to help the indomitable matron of honor, Tova, glue her imposing bosom into the strapless, lavender bridesmaid dress so it would not pop out during the ceremony.)

The sleek bride was a vision in her creamy, mermaid-style gown—her big brown eyes sparkling. I was overjoyed that Danica had found such a good man, an easygoing guy named Cole. It felt important and right to be there, even though our relationship was different from that of most sisters.

My mood was buoyant until we reached the parking lot of the church. Here I was seized with nerves, and my heart beat faster. Was I nervous for Danica? No, she had this. All that was left to do was cheer her and Cole all the way to the “I dos.”

As we walked toward the church, Dora grabbed my hand. She was also anxious. Not only was her child getting married, but I sensed that her family dynamics were currently tense, and there was nothing like a wedding to ratchet up the tension. Two of her sisters, Liz and Sharla, were going to be there, having flown in the day before. They brought with them one of her nephews and her mother, my birth grandmother. Her youngest brother, Victor, just three years older than I, would also be there.

Dora was also about to debut the daughter she had relinquished forty years beforehand, the granddaughter, niece, and cousin no one but Aunt Liz had ever laid eyes on. In fact, no one knew I existed until quite recently. After she’d scrupulously kept the secret of me for decades, Dora’s skeleton was about to walk in the door of the church in a coral red Ann Taylor sheath.

Dora and Bill and Doyle and I were ushered up to the front row of the church, my discomfort growing when I saw Dora’s relatives craning their necks for a first glance at the new family member.

I quickly calculated the emotional math:

As the seconds ticked, I felt their stares boring holes into the back of my head. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six . . .

What was the protocol here? Should I twist around and begin shaking hands and introducing myself? Should I pretend my biological grandmother and other assorted relatives weren’t inches away?

Five, four, three, two . . .

I felt a tap on my shoulder.

My relief was tangible. I didn’t have to make the first move. I twirled around, pasting a delighted smile on my face. Everyone stuck out their hands as I half-rose, pumping hands and grinning idiotically. Doyle followed suit, shaking hands and whispering greetings. “Hi! So nice to meet you!”

“Wow!” I whispered. “Well, we’ll talk later!”

If I’m being honest, I said “Wow!” a few more times.

So I’m a bit of an overcompensator. I think that’s already been established.

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Thankfully, the ushers whisked me, Doyle, Dora, and Bill out before the relatives who sat behind us. I was able to make my escape. Then, with the help of many quick prayers, several long trips to the ladies room, and a little disco dancing, I would survive the reception as well.

It was at the reception venue, between canapés and entrées, that my role as the Long Lost Rudineska Daughter kicked into high gear. There was time to mill around, nibbling on appetizers, while we waited for the table service to begin. My blood kin were very kind. I don’t even fault them for staring at me as if I were Angelina Jolie or an orangutan escaped from the zoo. Still, if I crawled under one of the tables, would anyone find me?

I was as curious about them as they were about me. I would have loved to stare at them too (ideally from behind a two-way mirror, as in a police lineup). But there was a gang of them, and only one of me. They had been related for decades and had gotten to know one another the way families do, over Christmases and birthdays and summer cookouts. These same years of time had unspooled as I forged bonds with my own family.

Aunt Sharla, with a voice as whispery as a dove, was the first to take an ice pick to the glacier of gaucheness that was this situation.

“Hi,” she said in honeyed vapors, offering her little hand. “I’m your aunt Sharla.”

“Wow! Hi!”

I’ll spare you. Suffice to say that there were many pleased utterances featuring exclamation marks at the end of them.

A few feet behind her, other assorted relatives lurked, beaming. Aunt Sharla’s husband was next, followed by their son, my cousin, a congenial hockey ref who vaguely looked like Ezra, but maybe that was the power of suggestion.

But there was no power of suggestion behind the fact that Uncle Vic had Ezra’s nose. Vic was the most relaxed of all the relatives, a friendly, good-looking guy with entrepreneurial zest. We chatted about his current venture: gold prospecting. For a moment, my keyed-up shoulders began to relax, and I started to breathe normally again. See! This whole Meet the Bios isn’t as bad as I thought. Except it felt pretty weird.

Anne never had a moment quite like this one. But I realized that someone else in Maud’s books had. In fact, as meetings with one’s kin go, mine wasn’t nearly as bad as Emily’s in Emily of New Moon, my second-favorite of Maud’s literary heroines.

In the first book of the Emily trilogy, we meet dear Emily, a softer, more introspective girl than Anne, with a sharply focused passion for writing. She, too, was orphaned, although she had been raised by a father who adored and understood her. When Douglas Starr died, leaving young Emily at the mercy of her dead mother’s estranged people, she was thoroughly daunted by the vaunted Murrays of New Moon.

The first meeting did not go well.

“Emily walked rigidly downstairs before Ellen and into the parlor. Eight people were sitting around it—and she instantly felt the critical gaze of sixteen stranger eyes.”

The introductions begin: “This is your Uncle Wallace. . . . Your Aunt Eva.”[90]

Uncle Oliver. Aunt Addie. Terrifying Aunt Ruth. Formidable Aunt Elizabeth. And then, lovely Aunt Laura and Cousin Jimmy.

“[Emily] felt deserted. . . . She was alone now before the bar of Murray opinion. She would have given anything to be out of the room. Yet in the back of her mind a design was forming of writing all about it. . . . She could describe them all—she knew she could.”[91]

As Aunt Elizabeth gazed at her niece, she thought of Emily as “alien,” but the girl was no more space invader to them than they were to her. But Emily knew that writing about it all would make it so much more manageable. “Courage and hope flooded her cold little soul like a wave of rosy light.”[92]

Unfortunately, no such design occurred to me there at the country club in Calgary. Emily of New Moon would resort to hiding under the table to get a bead on her new bio relatives; I was tempted to do the same, but it was too late.

“Lori, dear, I’ve placed you beside Grandma!” Dora chirped brightly. The crowd dispersed.

Oh dear, sweet mother of pearl . . .

Grandma. My mind flashed to my darling grandma Loewen, someone I had loved with my whole heart and who had loved me as wholly as anyone. My grandma, a wheat farmer’s wife who dressed her still-peppery hair in a bun until her death at ninety-three, wore dresses and flowery, vintage aprons from cradle to grave, in the Mennonite way. Did she ever wear pants, even when she was bringing in the sheaves alongside my grandpa all those harvest seasons? I think not.

In that flare of memory, I saw my grandma’s doe eyes light up at the sight of me on her farmhouse threshold. She had been gone for twelve years, and I missed her. She had deepened and elevated my life with her devotion and care, while this lady next to me, a key provider of my inherited traits, was a stranger.

I knew some of this stranger’s back story. Born and raised in the Netherlands, Ketty had been swept off her feet by a soldier from Canada who had been among the heralded troops who liberated the Dutch from Nazi occupation. Steve and his fellow soldiers had freed her (and so many others) from war and starvation. She must have been lightheaded by those “Johnny Canucks,” so handsome in their uniforms, true heroes. Finally, there was food to eat in place of tulip bulbs and tree bark, and peace and relief to consume in place of gnawing fear and terror. Who knows what that girl saw and heard during the war years? Who knows what she experienced?

Ketty was pregnant with my birth mother before she even landed in Nova Scotia as one of Canada’s earliest Dutch war brides. But here was another broken fairy tale in the branches of my family tree. As it was told to me, Ketty and Steve’s love story was a hothouse orchid, unable to withstand the elements of homesickness and a life an ocean away from home. But they were devout Catholics, so my birth grandparents divorced only after many years of marriage.

I had been told that Ketty’s relationship with Dora, her eldest daughter, was often a difficult one. Whatever the reasons, their relationship was in ruins when Dora became pregnant with me, when she needed a mother’s love most of all.

As I took my seat next to a little old lady with a fuzzy helmet of dyed brown hair, I was a bowl of mixed nuts (and feelings). A burst of raw allegiance kicked in, and I felt a stab of guilt. Was I somehow cheating on Grandma Loewen?

Luckily, one of my spiritual gifts is small talk, and if living in Grand Rapids for fourteen years had taught me anything, it had taught me how to make small talk with Dutch people.

I sawed into my chicken entrée with gusto. Most people can’t eat a bite when they are emotionally taxed, but not me. I wasn’t counting calories as I prattled on about every Dutch subject I could think of.

Tulips? Check.

Banket? Check. (Banket, for the uninitiated, is a stick of pastry featuring almond paste—a baked good precious to the heart of Hollanders everywhere.)

Windmills? Those gigantic mints the size of antacid tablets with Queen Wilhelmina’s face etched on them? Check!

No Dutch subject was left unturned. Was she a FIFA fan? Speed skating? Boy, those Dutch skaters sure cut a fine figure in those orange suits, eh? As I thumbed through my Dutch Rolodex, Ketty seemed almost nonchalant about meeting me, as if she could take or leave the chance to interact with the grandchild she had never met. She smiled slightly as she talked about her upbringing in the Netherlands and responded to my comments and questions with short answers.

There had been murmurs that maybe Grandma Ketty was slipping a bit. Was that it, or was she truly blasé? Whichever, I found her casual attitude, especially the way she did not gawp at me as if I were the eighth wonder of the world, to be wildly refreshing.

Unfortunately, Ketty’s stance was in sharp contrast to others at the table. A friend of Dora’s was agog at the astonishing resemblance between me and Ketty. (Boy, nothing strokes the old ego like being told you look exactly like an eighty-year-old woman.)

“It’s amazing,” she oozed. “You two could be twins.”

Twins? Perfect.

I was saved a time or two by Tova, seated a few feet away at the head table. Every time we made eye contact, she grinned and gave me a thumbs-up to indicate that she and her gown were glued together as one. For this, I will never stop loving her.

Finally, just as I was about to run out of Dutch topics, it was blessedly time for speeches and toasts.

Dora’s speech was quiet and subdued. She welcomed Cole to the family and thanked those who had come from out of town, “especially Danica’s sister, Lori, who came from Michigan.”

Since half the crowd (at least) didn’t have a hot clue that Danica had a sister, there was a murmur heard throughout the room. I suppressed the urge to rise and give a wave all round. You could almost hear the puzzle pieces being locked into place as folks figured out that—aha!—that gal in the red dress, the one who looks suspiciously like Danica and is sitting beside Danica’s grandmother at a table with Danica’s parents, was her, that’s who! Because no one can resist an Oprah moment.

On the outside, I looked as if all my wits were collected nicely in bins from the Container Store.

Sorted out, as the Brits say.

Pepino suave, as the Spanish say.

However, I was as ruffled as a tutu. My wits were not sorted, but rather strewn willy-nilly all over my humanity like something off a TV show about hoarders. Cool as a cucumber? No sir, Señor Suave. Fried pickle at the fair was more like it.

Fortunately, the guests’ attention was soon focused back where it belonged as the bridal party continued its loving, tearful tributes to the bride and groom, who had found each other after a relatively long and winding path. One of my favorites was from Tova, who gave a sweet speech about her decades of friendship with Danica. Then there were toasts and glasses raised to Danica and Cole with hopes for a blessed union of souls.

And then . . . there was dancing.

Now, Mennonites do not partake of dancing at their weddings, at least they didn’t when I got hitched to Doyle in 1991. Somehow, Freiwilleges stood in for dancing and toasting. Nor do they taste the fruit of the vine. In fact, my dad vetoed the liqueur-laced chocolate cheesecake I had wanted for the “bride’s favorite dessert” portion of our wedding menu. My pleas that the alcohol is cooked off in the baking process, that there was no possible way for a guest to become inebriated on a slice of cheesecake, fell on deaf ears. The cheesecake was delicious but decidedly unlaced with any funny business.

(“We got in just under the wire,” my mum likes to say about the fact that my Big Fat Mennonite Wedding was one of the last to feature no alcohol or dancing. She says this in the well-satisfied manner of one who has escaped tremendous debauchery. In addition to the ban on dancing and drinking, she would include strapless wedding dresses under this tally. My mum and Anne are on the same page on the subject of puffed sleeves. Anne approves of them because they are the height of fashion, and my mum approves of them because they provide outstanding coverage. When my cousin Jennifer got married eight years after I did, my mother did not mind one iota about the DJ, the champagne toasts, or Jen’s strapless gown. As for her and her house, they had gotten in under the wire.)

Despite this upbringing, or maybe because of it, I love dancing. In fact, about a year before the wedding, Doyle and I had taken seven months of ballroom dancing lessons at Arthur Murray. “What you have here are a Mennonite and a Baptist,” I warned our adorable teacher, Mr. Peck. “That’s five hundred years of no dancing.” To be honest, this dance-free heritage showed. But there was one dance at which we excelled: the Hustle.

I revere the Hustle, because not only is it done to the luscious beats of the 1970s, it also takes on a life of its own once underway, like an amusement park ride. Once you get in the pocket of a fine piece of music such as “Le Freak” by Chic, the Hustle almost dances itself.

On Danica’s wedding night, nothing could have provided a better escape than a little disco fever. We were in the pocket of the song, hustling and twirling. This activity beat the pants off of skulking in a bathroom stall.

My bio relatives were also on the dance floor, going to town. Even Ketty was bop/shuffling around the floor. We exchanged smiles as I flew by her.

While I twirled, I sorted wits. These people were a small part of me, and I was a small part of them. Grandma Ketty was more than simply a nice Dutch lady I sat next to at a wedding, listening to her story. But her part was also small. This lady would never claim a stake in my heart, as my grandma Loewen and oma Reimer had. But tonight was our one chance to meet, and I was glad, after all, that Dora had pushed it. I would never see her again.

Exhilarated and sweaty, the dancing duo of Doyle and I left the dance floor and collapsed into chairs. I was relieved the night was coming to a close and that it hadn’t been all confusion.

I had seen my birth sister, whom I love, marry a wonderful man. I had made a few new friends, and they, too, fancied dancing. I had learned some things about Ketty’s story, and therefore my own story.

Nobody was forcing me to move to an atoll in the sea with these people, forsaking my own loved ones and expunging them from my memory and heart. I could take the meat from these encounters and leave the bones.

As a fairy tale, this one was cracked, true; but as a reunion, it was all starting to make some sense. No, my story probably never would have made it on Oprah, but the experience did help connect the dots in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Having the chance to integrate my two identities was more of a gift than a burden, and I suddenly felt grateful.

Alles gut, Grandma Loewen used to always say. Everything is okay. Everything is good. I love you.

Sometimes when I miss her and can’t quite ring her up, I’ll throw a roast in the slow cooker, and the smell helps me remember. I never smell roast beef baking without having the memory of her love and nurture. In season, I’ll buy a bunch of gladioli, her favorite flower, in peach or deep red, and dunk them in a vase on my kitchen table. I’ll wrap myself up in the pink comforter cover she made for me when I went away to college until I can feel her again.

She is with me still. She is my grandma always. I hold her everywhere, even at the table at a wedding reception where an old Dutch war bride sits next to me.

Alles gut, Grandma. I love you too, forever.