Romeo and Juliet or Grandma and Bernie


Grandma had one other boyfriend before she met Grandpa.

The relationship was just as ill-fated as the ones she had with Nuts or Hank. Bernie Rosenblatt was Jewish and Grandma was Catholic, but in 1929, they were just two young adults who took the same bus home from work.

Bernie was going to school in New York City, and summers he spent at his home in Bridgeport. His summer job was as a shoe salesman in a downtown women’s shoe store. Both Bernie and Grandma waited together at the same bus stop and before long they went from idle chatter to plans for a real date.

“How was I supposed to know he was Jewish,” Grandma told us. “All I saw was a handsome young man with great manners and beautiful shoes. Bernie had no way of knowing I was Catholic either. I wasn’t wearing a cross and he wasn’t wearing a Star of David. I still to this day don’t know why any of that ever mattered, but boy did it. I was soon to find out how much it mattered.”

Bernie and Grandma made plans to meet at Seaside Park on a Sunday afternoon. You could get a hotdog or an ice cream and sit on a bench, look out at the water and have a chance to talk and maybe even hold hands or kiss, Grandma said.

Grandma’s mother didn’t believe there was a man in the world worth a whit, because her mostly-absent husband was one of the worst, so Grandma didn’t tell her who she was meeting that day.

Grandma had a brand new outfit she’d just bought. It was a cream colored dress with a red crocheted edging on the collar and on the cuffs of the puffed sleeves and it had a red leather belt with brass grommets. She also bought a new pair of pumps the same color as the belt. It was by far the prettiest dress she’d ever owned, she thought.

And the shoes cost her a week’s salary because she didn’t want to have a date with a shoe salesman with cheap shoes on her feet. She knew she was living on the edge wearing red shoes, a color that seemed to indicate a woman’s virginity, or lack of it. But she threw caution to the wind and bought what she wanted. When she took the last look at herself in the mirror she thought she looked beautiful.

“I was that happy and excited,” Grandma said.

At the Rosenblatt house, Bernie’s mother was watching him preen in front of the mirror and wondering just who was this girl he was meeting.

When he told her who it was, Mrs. Rosenblatt “threw a seven,” said Grandma. Mrs. Rosenblatt told Bernie she knew the family quite well and they were not Jewish and they were French Canucks at that!

Bernie told his mother he didn’t care. He liked Grandma.

Mrs. Rosenblatt said like turns to love but Catholics don’t turn Jewish. She said he had a responsibility to marry a Jewish girl and that was that. She told him he couldn’t meet Grandma at the park and threatened to pull him out of college or worse.

All this was going on while Grandma was sitting on the park bench.

And she sat and she sat.

She watched the children go by on roller skates. She pet a wandering dog who stopped by the bench. She watched the sailboats come and go and saw the afternoon turn into evening. Through her tears, she ate a hotdog with sauerkraut and dropped some on her pretty dress. Then she left.

Monday evening, Bernie was already at the bus stop when Grandma arrived.

Grandma says she held her head up high and tried not to either cry or scream. She was hopping mad though for being stood up. And she was sad.

Bernie looked as if his tie was too tight because his face was purple and he looked nowhere near as handsome as he had on Friday.

“I’m sorry,” he finally blurted out.

Grandma had to ask. “Why didn’t you meet me like you said you were going to? I waited till it was suppertime and you never showed up.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “My mother found out who I was meeting and said I couldn’t go. You know, the differences in our religion.” He went on to explain to Grandma how like turned to love. He told her everything his mother had said. There was no sense in being friends if it couldn’t go anywhere.

“Your mother would feel the same way,” Bernie told her, and Grandma knew this was true too.

Did you ever see Bernie again, we asked?

Oh yes, a few years later I did, when I was dating your Grandfather and we had already made a promise to each other to get married by then. I saw Bernie in Uncle George's shoe store; he worked there for one summer.

(Grandpa’s sister Marie had married George, a Jewish man – we sort of knew that but to us it was no big deal. They were a perfectly normal married couple who even in their 80s showed much love and affection for each other.)

We had to ask, “Well how come Uncle George was Jewish but he still married Aunt Marie who was Catholic. That would have been during the same time period. Wasn’t it? How come they were able to get married?”

“Yes true, same time period but different people,” Grandma said. “Maybe Uncle George’s mother didn’t care so much and Aunt Marie didn’t have a mother which is why she and your Grandpa grew up in an orphanage. Maybe religion was able to take a back seat to love if the love was strong enough. I don't know.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though," Grandma said. “They’d have never gotten married if Uncle George left Aunt Marie sitting on a bench at Seaside Park. That’s one thing I know for sure.”