Here is a short piece I wrote for my writing class about my amazing Dutch Granny. The assignment was to describe someone based on their likes and dislikes, rather than what they looked like, etc. On this special day of remembrance, it seemed fitting to share a little of her story with you.

Every night, Granny Koenig took grim satisfaction in throwing Hitler off her third story apartment balcony. He deserved it; he was trying to steal her jewelry box. The wound of living through two world wars in Holland ran deep enough to be embedded in her dreams, and caused to her to wander the house weeping some nights. But in the bold light of day, she gloried in her nocturnal victories. After all, they made good stories, and she enjoyed telling stories to her three Canadian grandchildren who had come to live with her.

She told them of her father, the German Baron whom she despised for abandoning her poor French mother, who had died when Granny was only five, leaving her orphaned and alone. She relished in telling the children about the naughty things she had done in church, such as what exactly she had put in the holy water, for she had no use for God the Father after her own father disappeared.

Granny Koenig loved to sit in her rocking chair and describe her self-made success… how she learned French and English as well as her native Dutch, and was able to be a nanny for a wealthy American family who took her on cruises, decked out in black velvet and diamonds. How she had cherished that velvet…her fingers thrilled at the memory of its softness.

Granny Koenig despised such things as smoking and drinking, which she had never, ever done. The children tried not to smirk at the picture hanging above her rocker, showing their Granny drawing on a huge cigar with delight. You could forgive an old woman some discrepancies when she frequently bought you popsicles from the newsstand flower shop on the corner, and delighted in chasing your little brothers around the apartment, waving her walking stick in mock anger when they put toy bugs on her neck. In any case, anyone brave enough to hide Jewish children in her house during the war, and to still face the Fuhrer every night in her dreams, certainly deserved to be treated with generosity, even we children knew that.