Opa and Oma

This is my Opa and Oma, my grandparents on my mother's side. These pictures were taken some time in the late 70s/early80s in Schiphol airport in the Netherlands. They'd just returned home from visiting my family in New Jersey and my aunt picked them up from the airport.

When my grandparents (Coen and Anna) were in their early twenties, they had two small children, my mother and aunt; my uncle hadn't been born yet. World War II had broken out and was in the process of destroying Rotterdam and other areas in the Netherlands. My grandfather had to go to war, for which the Dutch were only equipped with antique weapons, as they were a neutral country. He was sent to Indonesia and also a concentration camp. Unbelievably, he was released after a few years on a Friday, the 13th (a lucky day in my family).
While he was away, my grandmother stayed home with her two young girls wondering when, if ever, she would see her husband again. Her brother and his small daughter lived with them (her brother's wife had died, leaving him to raise their daughter). He would have had to go to war but he disguised himself as an old man whenever leaving the house so as to avoid detection - he had a family to protect. He would leave to gather food and come back several days later.
As if this weren't enough pressure and responsibility, they hid two Jewish neighbors in their basement. The courage people are capable of displaying in the face of extreme danger astounds me.

My grandfather died when I was quite young. The only pictures I've seen with him and me are one of me sleeping on him as a baby, and another of me standing on the bathroom vanity grabbing his nose. He was a clown to children, beloved by animals and respected by the people around him. When he died, people from all over - some who hadn't spoken to him for decades - came to contact my mother and grandmother and tell them what a wonderful man had been lost. They already knew.
My grandmother lived until I was in high school. She was probably (and I might be a bit biased here...but only a little) the best grandmother in the entire history of grandmothers. She sang to us, read to us, played puzzles and ENDLESS games for which few adults have the patience. She knitted us a million sweaters and she always wrote down things we said we liked so that she could bring them on her next visit. She would come to the US for several weeks at a time and she was always gentle and kind and loving to my parents and my brother and me. She had a bout of breast cancer when I was younger and kicked its ass, but it eventually came back and got her.

There should be more people like my grandparents in the world. They were loving, practical, delightful, decent people who made others' lives better. They demonstrated so much humanity and I'm extremely proud to come from them.