Originally posted by Judge Crater
hvb:
Although born in America, my wife was first generation and grew up speaking Hungarian at home.
Her mother was raised in an orphanage by nuns during the 1930s and WWII and had very definite ideas of what girls do and don't do.* She also thoroughly emeshed my wife in taking care of the family, other people's needs, etc.
Reform politics was my wife's only passion. She wanted to honor by imitation her father** who was a well known poet, writer, and rabble rouser in Hungary prior to WWII and during the 1956 uprising. A death sentence was later rescinded in gentler times.
I met her during a political campaign. I wrote speeches for her candidates and took them campaigning in neighborhoods where I knew people.
We've completely changed each other's lives and have done quite a lot to soothe and heal each other.
*None of which ever stopped her mother, who was extremely talented at playing older men in post WWII times. Quite the operator, she talked my wife's father into abandoning his wife and running away to America.
**Ironically, my wife's father was a notorious skirt chaser until coming to America. Interesting man. He is in his late 80s and can still recite from memory poems from Villon, Rimbaud, etc. that he read as a boy. Sometimes I change his diapers, shave him and give him a bath.