A Love Story

Several summers ago, I asked my grandpa how he fell in love with my grandma. Always one to tell a good story, he eagerly relayed the following tale. I wrote his words down later that night.
This is how it happened.

“Pop-Pop, can I ask you a question?”

We were sitting at the outdoor dining table at twilight. It was the kind of twilight that steals swiftly in on the coolest of breezes with the scent of damp grass; the kind of twilight where fireflies shyly burst with yellow warmth in a thousand tiny lights— and he nodded his head in response.

“How did you know you were meant to marry Nana?” It was a simple question, perhaps a bit naïve, but I wanted to know how he would respond. And he smiled and raised his hands and said, “That was easy.”

And he told me the story of how it was not love at first sight at all, but rather a firm—almost brotherly— feeling within him that the girl my grandma was at that time must not be hurt in any way. And he told me how it all changed one day during the war when his parachute came down too fast on a particularly windy day and he shattered his leg and he was lying in the hospital expecting the worst— and she came to see him, wearing a delicate blouse, and she sat on the foot of his hospital bed. “In that moment,” he smiled, “I suddenly saw the whole girl.” In that moment, he looked at her and said, “Elaine, do you think we have a future together?” And the girl my grandma was blushed and said, “I’d like that, Ed.”

“Then,” he laughed— “Then, everything became easier.” Because he knew that there was someone waiting for him. Because he could look up at the moon in the night sky and say to himself, “Somewhere in America, there is Elaine.”