tonight was the celebration of my grandparent's 55th aniversary. my grandma, hellen joanne matyok [match-ahk], is 76 and my grandpa, stephen mezardjian (who took on the middle name of hatchador* when he moved to the states), is 87.
my grandma's side is turkish/hungarian. when you get down to it, theyre about the same thing. its scary when you look at pictures of my grandma when she was my age and younger. we are IDENTICAL. we have a picture in my living room of her when she was about 12 or 13. below it is a picture of me when i was about 12. the similarities are uncanny. then as my grandmother aged, she began to look like my mother when she was in her 20's-30's. theres a picture of my grandma on her wedding day, and she looks identical to my mother on her wedding day. their facial features are very alike. so this makes me wonder, will i grow up to look like my grandma? when i was younger, 6-9, i looked a lot like my older cousin miranda, only with dark hair and without the freckles.so this will always be a mystery to me. but anyways...
my grandfather was born in armenia but was quickly moved to greece and stayed there the first chunk of his life. his father, hatchador* (disregard spelling) mezardjian (pronounced mez-ard-jin) was killed when my grandfather was very young during the hungarian massacre. this is brutal, but they actually took him in the middle of the night and shot him in their corn fields. its awful. but that allowed my grandpa and his brother, john, (or as they call him in greek, hhhhoe-nee.) so they lived together with their mother, traveling everywhere around that general area. during this period is where my grandfather learned so many languages; german, french, italian, spanish, greek. he was multilingual. he traveled from school to school learning all these languages, never staying there for more than 4 years.
i think he said it was when he was 20 something that he came to the states. he said he came over about '51 or '52. but i dont know for sure what age he was. his brother came over two years before him.
i think my grandparents met at a tennis club in their community, they both worked there. i think my grandma served food and my grandpa managed it or something like that. anyways, so they got married and had 4 kids. my grandpa's brother, john, on the otherhand, has a different story.
he came to the states around '49. it took him a while to learn the language, but when he did he found his wife, gertie, who was austrian and german. how they met, i dont know yet. she always nagged him to speak english, but he never preferred to. the two had three kids, mike, ari (are-ree), and monica. monica is a year younger than my mom and they get along great. ironically enough, she has the strongest southern accent in the family. ari is the more crude sibling of the family, and didnt get along well with others. mike on the other hand is a good guy, and ill talk about him later.
so john taught his kids german at a young age, and so they grew up bilingual. pretty cool. but john, being just as multilingual as my grandfather, taught the kids words gertie didnt know, and so she would always smack him when they used it. i thought it was funny. but when mike was 8, john died. and the three kids looked up to my grandpa as a dad. i think john died of some kind of organ failure, but im not sure either, its a touchy subject.
fast forward to present day, mike came to visit my grandparents today and surprised them when we were at outback. the whole time he filled us in on his family, people i was oblivious to until today.
when mike was younger, much younger, seeing as hes 60, he was working in his office and he saw this woman at the receptionist desk in the front building. during the day he purposely walked in her direction just to see her. he did that three times, and on the fourth, someone else was sitting at the desk. mike acted like he was there for something else when the woman said "are you wanting to talk to pat?" then he basically replied with "is it that obvious?" the woman handed him pat's business card and noted "she left you something on the back."
it was her phone number.
so inevitably, they went out and married 4 years later. they were deeply in love. they didnt have any kids though.pat got a long with the family like she was born into it. she actually became one of my mom's good friends. it was all goin fine until about 6 years ago, when pat had some sort of cancer and died abruptly. it damaged my whole family, especially mike. man he loved, and still loves, that woman. even though he's moved on and gone on with his life, his eyes still twinkle when he talks about her. im not even kidding. he loves her so much, to this day. i can see it in him. the whole time at dinner, he was talking about how non of his "match.com" matches can even compare to pat. its so sweet, a true definition of love.
"well what ever happened to so and so? you guys were serious for a while.."
"oh her, she was too tall"
"what are you talking about? you were taller than her."
"i know, but she doesnt stand right compared to pat."
it was so sweet.
my grandfather has such an amazing history. i want him to write it down, so he will live forever. but he hasnt even told his kids all of it, so you know parts of it are hard to talk about. but both of my grandparents are truly amazing. im blessed to be intertwined with them :]
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