Payback time

They met when she was 17 at a summer garden party. 

It was the first garden party her parents let her on (accompanied by her older sisters of course). She wore her best dress and her mother braided her hair. He, on the other hand, was a young 22-year old man who finished four grades of primary school and had been working for 10 years already in order to help his parents feed and raise the rest of his siblings.

They eyes met across the dance floor and he liked what he saw. He asked her to dance with him and she said yes. After a couple of dances, she had to go home. She though that she will never see him again. But, she was mistaken... A month after that, he appeared at her doorstep asking her parents’ permission to court her. And then their love story began...

They lived in neighbouring villages; 30 minutes walking distance. During first winter of their courting, high snow has fallen and he wasn’t able to come and see her in months. There were no phones of mobile phones or Skype to communicate. After couple of months, the snow has finally melted and he could go see her. As a sign of “apology”, he single-handedly carved her a wooden box and was nervous about her reaction. She played cool “Ohhh, it’s you! Haven’t seen you in a while...How’ve you been?” while being angry at him but not willing to show him her true feelings (“If he had liked me enough, 2 meters of snow wouldn’t stop him from seeing me...”).

Next year, he decided to continue his education and to be able to go to college one day. In order to do that, he had to move to Pula, a city 200 kilometres away. He wrote her letters every week, but there was no reply. For months. At the end, he decided to go home and to see what happened. When he arrived at her home and asked why she didn’t reply to any of his letters, she looked him in the eyes and lied. She said she didn’t receive any of his letters when in fact she did. She received then, read all of them a thousand times and stored them in the same box he single-handedly carved for her. He never found out about that little white lie. Never. When I asked her why she did that – why didn’t she answer any of his letters, she just smiled. I guess that was her way of “payback“ for „not-coming-to-see-her-at-2-meters-snow-period“.

They got married on July 9^th 1955. after five years of courting.

This is only the beginning the whole-life-love story of my grandparents. On January the 5th, it will be 12 years since my granddad passed away. A day doesn’t pass by, without her remembering him... “If we only had one more year... just one more...”

After all, they spent together 50 years... so what is one more year?