The Tale of Phil and Ida

Eighty-one years ago today, my grandparents, Phil and Ida, were married in New York.  During the past year, I have told lots of stories about these two wonderful people.  To meet them, they could seem ordinary.  They were not famous, or eye-catching, or particularly gifted with any skill.  What was remarkable about them was the way they lived—with a deep love and respect for one another and a commitment to the family that they built.  When my grandmother eventually lost her faculties in her eighties, requiring her relocation to a nursing home, my grandfather died of a broken heart.  He could not face each new day without the love of his life by his side.  She found her way home to him, just three months later.

My grandparents did not have an easy life.  They worked hard—my grandfather as a dentist (and in Florida as a registered pharmacist) and my grandmother as a teacher.  In addition to their own three children, my grandparents were like guardians over their own extended families, taking proprietary care of every niece and nephew as if they were their own children.  My grandfather would give anyone the shirt off his back if they needed it; my grandmother would set a place at her table for anyone in need of a hot meal.

I have told many tales about the special moments that my grandmother and grandfather created for me in my life, but these pale by comparison to what they meant to each other.  To see them together was to understand what love is.  My grandparents were the model on which my husband and I based our own marriage—a commitment to the spirit of sacred vows “to love and to cherish.”  There was something about the way my grandparents related to each other.  My grandmother could anticipate my grandfather’s needs down to his next bite or next change of clothing.  My grandfather would worry that my grandmother had spent too many days burdened with the mundane without being made to feel like a queen.  He would succumb to spontaneous bouts of the magnanimous, buying her frivolous jewelry for no reason except that the mood struck him. 

Ida and Phil were adorable together.  After fifty years together you could still catch them referring to each other as “my love.”  My grandfather thought that he had captured the greatest treasure on Earth the day he exchanged vows with his beloved—a young girl of twenty he waited nearly seven years to marry.  There was not a day that they took for granted, and not a day spent angry or cross.   But the greatest gift was their sense of humor.  They never took life or each other too seriously.  The day after my grandfather turned 70, he said, “I worked all day, and made love all night.”  To which my grandmother added, “That’s because it takes you all night!”

I love to keep my grandparents alive, making them a part of every holiday celebration.  I set the table with my grandmother’s wedding silver—a humble, once-modern set of silver plate that is more precious to me than any sterling could be.  I remember how she taught me to set a table, and then to count the forks and knives after the meal.  The flavors that wafted from her tiny kitchen as she prepared a soulful meal could make you weep.  I keep her recipe box in my kitchen, each card written in her practiced teacher’s hand.  I fix her recipes—traditional foods for the holidays—to fill my home with their essence.  I want my children to know something of how it felt to be enveloped in the love of my grandparents’ home. 

Today, when people say, “They just don’t make’em like they used to,” most people think of cars or furniture or other material “things.”  I think of my grandparents, and the marriage that they forged together that lasted sixty-one years, until they were parted by death.  Every year on their anniversary, my grandfather would kiss my grandmother affectionately and say, for everyone to hear, “it seems like just yesterday.”  It was not hyperbole.  He really, really meant it. 

Tonight, my husband and I will open a bottle of wine and drink to their love for each other and for the love they showed to us.  It was no surprise that when I brought home a red-headed Oregonian, my grandparents welcomed him with open arms.  My grandfather asked me, “Do you love him?”  “Yes,” I replied.  “Well,” he said, “then we love him, too.”

With them, it was always just that simple.