Kaldiya

My other grandmother, Kaldiya, had a crazy story. When she was twelve they gave her a white dress. She put it on and went out to play with the kids. She fell in the mud. She came back and they scolded her, “You can’t play in the mud! It’s your wedding day!”

So that’s how Kaldiya met her husband, my grandfather, who was seventeen at the time. For seven years they tried but failed to have kids. So Kaldiya, now nineteen, and convinced she’s barren, started looking for a second wife for her husband. She met a woman from Syria, blonde hair, bright blue eyes, with four children from a previous marriage: proven fertility. She asked her to marry her husband. When my grandfather married the other woman, the surprise was that both women got pregnant at the same time. They both had girls. A year and a half later, both got pregnant at the same time again. They both had boys.

My grandmother, who had asked the other woman to marry her husband, never forgave my grandfather for actually going through with it. So my grandfather divorced the other woman, and my grandmother went on to have four more children. Even then, she did not forgive him.