A few months ago, my cousin Uli announced his 60th birthday party via group cousin email. I love that I get this flood of detailed news in German - all my cousins are now on the copy list, and most of the time I just listen in. I hear who is going to be able to be in Gera for my aunt Bärbel's birthday, and get a sense of the inside jokes I've been missing. Constant references to my cousin Saskia's blue couch, the one she likes to melt into after a long day of conference organizing, make me wonder just what backstory I've missed. I don't ask. Partly because, despite my best efforts, my written German feels stiff and awkward, like a special party dress that's been hanging in the closet so long that it won't move with my body when I finally do wear it.
But this party.... well, I'm going to be turning sixty this year, and I won't be having one of those monumental German family birthday parties. They take place at restaurants, in special party rooms, and begin in the afternoon with cake and coffee. In the Poser family tradition, coffee is followed by speeches and poems written by the relatives for the occasion. There might be a serenade by 10 year-olds performed on the recorder. A special skit to celebrate the group gift. After a suitable amount of mingling, dinner is served. Then there's music, dancing and usually some amount of drinking, though that's more of a social lubricant than the focus. The success of a Poser event is measured by how late the guests finally trickle home. Never before midnight. After all, even my grandmother Hedwig's ninetieth lasted until 1 am.
The only way I was going to get to a sixtieth birthday party this year was to join Uli at his. So here I am, jet-lagged, in the village of Etzdorf, a few kilometers from Gera on April 3rd, with snow outside my window. To be fair, it's unseasonably cold. It should be 10 degrees warmer and probably raining.
This morning it hit me. Since I left Germany in 1966, this has been a country of summers for me. I have only seen the parts I want to see.
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