SOL 29 of 31 -- Kurt

Kurt joined my grandparents and me for dinner again this evening.  This time I heard stories about his wife.

After World War II, Kurt returned to Israel.  He met a beautiful woman and they started dating.  This woman's mother never left the house except to walk to the grocery store.  She never rode the bus, never went out socializing.  Kurt was working as a bus driver; all the drivers were part owners of the company.  He had a small apartment and was trying to save money.  After dating for two years, he heard a knock on his apartment door one evening. He thought it was his girlfriend.

"Come in," he called.  No one came in.  He heard the knock again and answered the door.  It was his girlfriend's mother!  "What's wrong?" he asked.

"It's been two years," she said. "It is time now." There was his girlfriend's mother, the one who never left the house, telling Kurt to marry her daughter.  Kurt hadn't even been thinking of marriage.

A few days later Kurt was with his girlfriend and he told her that the mother had visited.  She was angry that her mother had been to his apartment and rushed away.  When he saw her next, she told him that she hadn't spoken to her mother since.

"You haven't spoken to your mother?!" Kurt asked incredulously.  He drove her back to her house and said, "You go talk to your mother right now!"  The women talked and not long after, Kurt married his girlfriend.

Soon after they were married, Kurt received a letter from his cousin who had moved to New York.  The letter said that now was a good time for Germans to immigrate to America.  Kurt and his wife decided to go.  They moved into a tiny apartment on the twelfth floor in New York but did not stay for long.  They decided to return to Israel. On their last day in America, Kurt got a green card.  As soon as Kurt saw the ship, he said, "I think we're making a terrible mistake."  But his wife said, "Our luggage is already on the ship!"  So they went back to Israel.  Kurt was able to return to his bus driving job because he was part owner of the company.  They stayed for a year and a half before returning to America for good.  It was good he had gotten a green card because, he said, he would not have been allowed back in the U.S. without it.

Kurt and his wife were married for 63 years.  She died of Parkinson's disease last June, just a couple of weeks after they moved to Colorado from Florida.  "I don't know if she ever knew we were here [in CO]," Kurt said.