"Yes, Oma..."

When I recently saw my grandmother (Oma) she looked at me and commented "You have an awful lot of color!" I told her we've been spending a lot of time outside recently in the gardens.

She looked at me disapprovingly and told me to "Be careful!"

This is the same grandmother who when I was a little girl would firmly (but lovingly) remind me to sit up straight and not fidget. Not fidgeting was the hard one for me! She would also occassionally remind us that I was a "lady" and should act like one. I suppose ladies are careful and don't get baked in the sun while weeding their carrot rows...

But I would like to point out to all the world one of me Oma's greatest escapades. We have always known she is a strong women! That was never in doubt. In the 1950s she left both her children in Germany and came to Ohio to establish a new life for them. My grandfather died in a Russian POW camp following the seige of Stalingrade. (Thanks Sis for your research!)

But Oma is never boastful and talks very little about herself or her life in Germany so we were very suprised when we got this little juicy tidbit out of her a few weeks ago...

One day she was swimming in the Rhine River. She decided to swim all the way across! But when she got to the other side she looked back and decided that it was to far to swim back because she was tired and it was pretty wide where she swam acorss...

So she would have to walk across the bridge which was a way up the street. So she would have to walk through Mannheim to the bridge and across in her bikini!

I guess bikinis were all the rage in France in the mid 1940s. So of course my fashionable grandmother had one. (She actually blushed when she told us, I have never seen my late 80's grandmother blush before!)

Now, I am sure this was in the age before sun screen. So I think my Oma needs to be greatful I am not hoeing those onions in a bikini!

(She'll have a heart attack if she finds out I posted this... so to all the grandkids... Don't get me in trouble OK?!?)