When you meet you're inevitably drawn in by the warmth that radiates from her clear blue eyes. When she speaks, you feel the sincerity and spiritual conviction that impel her words. And when she says she's recently given a lot of thought to the meaning of love, as she did when we first met, you have the sense that she knows a little something about the subject.
After all, out of love her parents sent her—and her two siblings—to Denmark, at the tender age of six, to live with her maternal grandparents so they would have a better life. For the next seven years, Irmela's father, who was struggling to make a living as a musician in Germany after World War ll, would see his children only once or twice a year, whenever he traveled to Copenhagen for a concert.
Yet, her memories of those years are sweet. Among them, lots of joyful hymn singing in her grandparents' home and a mental snapshot she still carries with her of her morfar (Danish for mother's father), who had studied at one time to be a pastor, reading his well-worn copy of the Bible through a magnifying glass. An early influence in Irmela's life, her grandfather introduced her and her brother and sister to the Bible, frequently entertaining them with its stories. "We didn't talk about religion," Irmela told me in commendable English, "but my grandfather was so open-minded and kind. He—and my grandmother, too—really showed us the love of God."
