Lunch with my ladies Friends (Caroline and Margaret)

I entered the dining hall at precisely 11:30 am to see if I could beat my dining companions to the table. I figured they were a on a tight schedule. Boy was I wrong!!!
I sat there for a good 15 minutes before Margaret Baum (from Berlin, Germany)
arrived. Andre, our server for lunch and asked if I was ready to order. I said “Yes”
and placed my order for a “Manhattan on the rock, stirred not shaken”. He gave me the most confused look and proceeded to tell me coffee, juice, milk and soda. So, I splurged, and had a diet coke. By this time, I saw Margaret coming with a great big smile from the well conditioned elevators, which one was broken. The door on the third floor kept opening and closing. It scared the residences to no end. So, we were working off one elevator for the day.
Once Margaret sat down with her cane on the back of the chair, I asked her I she had come down for breakfast. She said “Caroline and I don’t come down for breakfast. “It is too early. We like to read the newspaper at that time” in her thick German accent. By then, Caroline Dubis appeared with her walker. We all place our order with Andre and choose the turkey club.
While waiting for our entrees to come from the kitchen, I started small talk by asking what the meanings of our last names were. Baum in German means … tree and Dubis in French means … wood or lives in wood or woodcutter. I told them that Breitfeller meant …large field. Margaret corrected me and said that it was Breitfelder which meant large field. I said, they must have been drinking too much beer and the D got inadvertely got transcribed to a L. Hey!!! It sounds good.
Anyway, lunch was good, and Margaret invited me on a walk on the terrace and garden after lunch. Hey!!!! A date! I wonder if my wife will think I am cheating on her. Nahhhhhh! So off we went. Margaret be began telling her story of her flight out of Berlin before Hitler came into power. It was very interesting. We walked and talked for a couple of hours. She was a great story teller and I was the eager listener. She was so descriptive, that it started to play like the movie (Schindler's List) in my mind. It was so amazing to me, of what kind of life she has led and the endurance of the hardship for all these years. She is quite the remarkable women. She told me she has no regrets. I wanted to give her a great big huge, but I thought not on our second date, and I did not want to squeeze her out of her Depends, so we said our goodbyes.
We would meet at dinner for the last time.

To be continued…….