Ruth arranged for my mother meet her blind date (her brother-in-law) on street corner. My mother wrote in her 1984 essay, “Falling in Love,” “It might seem strange nowadays, but at the time of my youth it was quite acceptable and usual to meet people that way. . . . In order to recognize each other, he was supposed to carry a book and I was to carry a patent leather purse and a white handkerchief in my suit pocket.”
As she approached the corner, my mother was nervous and having second thoughts, “But . . . I saw a man standing there and it was too late to retreat. He was slender, slightly built and carefully and elegantly dressed. He had the most gentle and handsome face I ever saw. My heart skipped a beat – he was carrying a book!
“I never believed in ‘love at first sight,’ but we had one look at each other and it happened; we fell in love on the very first date.”
They saw each other constantly during my father’s four-week stay in Warsaw and by the time my father left to return to Vienna, they were engaged. This photo was taken by an itinerant photographer in a café, on that first date.