Perseverance In Love Despite Everything Going Wrong
Stories from my grandfather.
After spending some time away from writing due to some issues to solve in my life and not being able to create good content for all of you, I finally came back and with a couple of stories told by my grandfather to me that I think are really eye-opening. Here we go hope you enjoy it so much as I enjoyed hearing those from my grandparents, it’s so funny. My grandad fully engaged in the story and my grandmom interrupting and giving a silly but valuable piece of information to enrich the story.
Sacrifice
My grandfather is from Fafe and my grandmother from Barcelos (my Home town) and they met through school. In their time there were no cell phones or something they could get in touch with each other. He loved to play football and she loved to dance and go to dance clubs. They were separated by 60km and they could only meet on weekends but they had their hobbies as well. My grandmother desperately trying to solve the relationship told my grandfather the phrase that nowadays everyone takes like an insult.
It’s football or me!
He understood and gave up playing to be with her but he didn’t like dance clubs so he also said they would have to stop going, not totally but dramatically decrease.
Long story short they are 83 and they are still together. Happier than ever for making those decisions. They had 3 sons and 1 daughter that gave them 10 grandchildren.
From Portugal to Angola
They were only 24 years of age when they decided to move from our country to Africa, Angola to be more precise. They were both teachers. They started teaching in a city called Malange, where my father was born, and everything was going great. My grandfather rapidly climbed the ladder and became the director of the school at a young age. but with big achievement comes big responsibility. The governor asked him to move to another city but in the meanwhile, my grandmother also got to train other teachers there was once again a conflict of interests.
This time was different and it was my grandmother who sacrificed something she liked for him and it worked perfectly. Everything went well for some time but then they faced an issue and found some dirt on a high-ranked person. You see…my grandparents are very religious and very serious people so they had to report to someone. That didn’t go so well. The last years they were there that guy made sure they would live a nightmare. Always switching cities and even changing them to a school that was not even open yet still under construction.
In the end, everything worked out fine, they were able to get in touch with someone even bigger than that guy and they came back to Portugal.
But the really important thing to left clear here is the perseverance in both my grandparents on holding to each other and supporting one another.
Today it’s very difficult to find this. If you have to quit something for another person people say that’s stupid you should love each other the way you are. I mean it’s true but it’s not that easy. You have to make sacrifices if not in hobbies in something else as well as your partner.
The second story for me was incredible the way they stayed together despite everything because what we are used to seeing now is everyone separates or gets divorced for the silliest reasons or even worse for pride. Childish Society…
