Do you know the secret of a happy marriage? It’s simple. All you need is some yarn and a crochet hook, and you, too, can have a happy marriage. That’s how this old woman stayed happily married to the same man for well over half a century. Read on:
There once was a man and a woman who had been married for more than 60 years. They talked about everything. They kept no secrets from each other… except the old woman had a shoebox in the top of her closet that she cautioned her husband never to open or ask about. For all these years he had never thought about the box, but one day the old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would not recover. In trying to sort out their affairs, the old man took down the shoebox and took it to his wife’s bedside. She agreed it was time that he should know what was in the box. When he opened it, he found 2 beautifully crocheted doilies and a stack of money totaling over $25,000. He asked her about the unusual contents.
The secret of a happy marriage is some yarn and a crochet hook. It’s that simple! Photo © J. Elke Ertle, 2020. www.walled-in-berlin.com
“When we were married,” she said, ” my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doily.”
The little old man was so moved, he had to fight back tears. Only two precious doilies were in the box. She had only been angry with him two times in all the years of living and loving. He almost burst with joy and happiness. “Sweetheart,” he said…”that explains the doilies, but what about all this money? Where did it all come from?”
Oh,” she said, ” that’s the money I made from selling the doilies.”
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
