Lost Pages: Sundays in Krefeld (late 50's/early 60's)

On Sundays it feels like the whole town’s asleep except for the church bells echoing through the deserted streets.  In the mornings, myfather takes me on an adventure. I love it when we stroll to the freight train terminal. It’s closed like everything else; the cars rest on the tracks, empty, their open doors inviting.  We scramble from car to car, playing hide and seek, imagining journeys hidden between sacks of grain or stacked cabbages.

When we return, the thick smell of gravy warms us.  If our timing is good, my mother has the dumplings steaming in a bowl, and is ladling the gravy into its boat. The dumplings have a distinct smell of their own -  earthy but more subtle than boiled potatoes.  My father and I crunch left-over croutons as we help set the table.  For me, the roast is an afterthought.  I cut up my dumpling, spread the pieces in a thin layer across my plate and drown them in the thick brown sauce.  Whatever vegetable and meat accompany this feast take second place.

Sunday afternoons are for outings or visits with friends.  Whichever we are doing, we have to dress.  My father wears a suit with a white shirt and tie, my mother and I put on our best dresses. If we don’t have an invitation and no one is coming to visit us, we take the street car to the City Park or the Zoo, or all the way out to Ürdingen - the part of town along the Rhine.  There we stroll along the Rhine promenade, past other well-dressed families.   Sometimes we bring stale bread to feed the pigeons.   At five o’clock, when it’s Kaffeklatsch time,  everyone converges on the cafes for their Sunday torte and coffee.

If we are invited for ‘coffee,’ we first have to stop at the railroad station - the only place stores are allowed to open on Sunday - and buy flowers.  Then we take the streetcar to our destination.    The streetcars run less frequently on Sundays, but every one of them is full of people dressed in their best clothes, most of them carrying bouquets.  My favorite family to visit are the Willes.  They live just a few streetcar stops away.  When we ring the bell labeled ‘Wille’ at the front entrance of their apartment building, Onkel Bernhard sticks his head out the window and drops the housekey.  We let ourselves in and climb up the steps.  Just outside the door, my mother unwraps the flowers and hands them to me to present.  Tante Jutta ushers us into the cramped foyer,  and I curtsy and hand the bouquet to her.  She leads us into the living room, where the table is set with a white table cloth, fine china and coffee cups for the grown-ups, juice glasses for their son Rainer and me.  A torte, sometimes buttercream, sometimes glazed fruit,  and a plate of cookies wait in the center.  Rainer enters to greet my parents with a proper handshake and bow.   Tante Jutta disappears to find a vase and to finish making the coffee and whip the cream for the torte, while we settle in at the table.

Onkel Bernhard and Tante Jutta are not really my aunt and uncle.  I called them ‘Tante’ and ‘Onkel’ because that’s how we refer to any adult we know well.  It’s more respectful than calling an adult by a first name, but not as distant as saying ‘Herr’ or ‘Frau’ Wille.  It also allows me to use the informal ‘Du’ instead of the formal ‘Sie.’  Onkel Bernhard is an old friend of my parents.  They’d been at textile school together.  Onkel Bernhard had stayed to graduate and even work in East Germany for a few years before coming West.  My father helped him get a job at Kleinewefers where he works.

Rainer is exactly my age - he was even born on the same day.  Even though he is a boy, I like to play with him.  He has the toys I wish for but don’t get because they are boy toys: an electric train with an elaborate track and a medieval castle with a working drawbridge and armies of little metal knights.  Unlike other boys, he knows to stop tickling and wrestling when I yell “Enough!” Before we could play, we had to sit at the table with the adults, eating cake and drinking apple juice.  Finally, the adults decide we’ve sat still long enough, and give us permission to go. Rainer’s room is tiny, so most of his toys are upstairs, in an attic storage room.  It’s cold up there, and there are no carpets on the painted wood floor.  We wear sweaters and roll around wrestling until we are warm enough to lie down on our stomachs in front of Rainer’s castle, ready to conduct elaborate battles and pretend there are princesses to be rescued. Neither of us ever takes the part of the princess; we collaborate in the rescues.  We stay up there until the chill stiffens our joints.  The adults usually get so involved in their conversation that they don’t call us down until it is time for supper.  We run down the stairs to warm up and are glad for the hot herb tea with our sourdough rye and cold cuts.  The fathers drink beer and after dinner, Onkel Bernhard offers some brandy.  Tante Jutta passes around pieces of chocolate.  My parents consulted their watches to make sure we don’t miss the tram home.  When it is time to leave, I shake everyone’s hand with a  curtsy, though I exaggerate the motion with Rainer. He bows extra deep and pretends to loose his balance, so we crash into each other and upset the umbrella stand.  My father says:” It’s definitely time to go home. You guys are so tired you’re getting slap happy.”

Outside, it is dark  except for the dim light cast by the street lamps.  We are almost late for the tram, so my parents hold my hands and we walk as fast as I can.  My mother’s heels click on the sidewalk. In the Sunday evening quiet, her steps echo off the rows of apartment buildings, counting out a beat for me to follow.  We reach the stop with a minute to spare.  The tram screeches to a stop in front of us.  The inside glows with the warmth of lights reflected in the polished wood seats, most of them empty.  I lean against my father on the way home, insisting, of course, that I am not tired.

Me, in about 1958, dressed in my Sunday finery, out for a walk in the park.

Lost Pages: Hunger

My grandmother never used a potato peeler.  It was too wasteful.  True German housewives used knives to get thinner peels.  I have never known hunger or war, so I work at my kitchen sink, thick chunks of potato peel dropping from my peeler.  In front of me, my window glows with reflected Minnesota snow, and my American husband chops peppers beside me.  In the corner, a huge refrigerator hums, its belly brimming with food.

Still, I see my grandmother’s potato peels spiraling from her knife.  There were transparent, so thin that her potatoes emerged bumpy, eyes intact.  A mountain of potato peels grew from her knife in her lifetime.  Like every other woman in her East German town, she peeled potatoes to boil every day and grated them for dumplings on Sunday.

Before my parents and I left Germany when I was thirteen, I visited her in Gera every year for at least a week.  I remember sitting on a creaky kitchen chair, swinging my legs, as my grandmother unwound potato peels into a chipped enamel bowl cradled in her lap.  It was summer, and it was morning.  The white net curtains brushed against the panes of the open casement window.  Outside, a delivery truck crashed through the potholes in the cobblestones.  A pot of salted water waited on the table.

Her hand released memory as she uncovered pale potato flesh.  She told me how, during the war, her stream of peels grew longer.  More potatoes, less meat.  Then potatoes were rationed: five pounds per person per week in ’42 down to four pounds by ’44.  In ’45, after the war was over, even potatoes were hard to find.  Her knife stopped for weeks.

She fed her three youngest children two slices of bread each day.  She sprinkled the bread with salt and pepper and told them to close their eyes and conjure up the taste of liverwurst.  Sometimes, she could get a few grams of yeast to spread on top.  Once Gina, who was eight, came home bearing a bouillon cube, a gift from her piano teacher who’d had a package from America.  She made soup for five.

My legs hung still.  I strained to imagine years without cake or sausage.  Grandmother turned toward me, peering over the tops of her bifocals, quiet for a moment.

Then she talked about my father.  When he returned in ’46, well-fed and strong, from his US POW camp, he was twenty-two.  She sent him out on his old bicycle - the tires were so worn that he had to patch them every ten kilometers - to Gauern where her cousins had a farm.  He could work at the farm for a day, harvesting hay or digging turnips, eat his fill at their table, and maybe earn a few potatoes to bring home.  When they didn’t have any to spare, he could steal potatoes in the village fields.  Once he got arrested, but another time he escaped with a whole sack.  They feasted then.  Potato soup, potato pancakes for days.

How could my father have stolen?  She shook her head and bent closer to her knife saying: We would do anything for food.  It was a terrible, terrible time.

Lost Pages: New York, 1966

At the end of a shortened night the plane began its descent.  Thoughts of the future vanished along with my attempts to appear indifferent as I craned my neck to admire the famous skyline.  New York!  The largest city in the world.  I’d been to famous cities - Vienna, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam - but the very idea of New York carried a charge.  This city was the gateway to America.  Das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten.  The land of unlimited possibilities. As the plane turned in its approach, skyscrapers swung into view.  I recognized the Empire State Building’s spike and knew that I was looking at the tallest building on earth. We would be staying for four days before flying on to Greenville, South Carolina. I couldn’t wait to explore Manhattan. 

Jet lag knocked me off center. My brain buzzed and my eyes burned. My father insisted that the secret to a quick adjustment was to force yourself to live by the local clock.  As soon as we had stowed our luggage, we stumbled through the city to ward off sleep.  I gaped at the rows of tall buildings lining the streets.   I felt like I’d wandered into a roofless cathedral. My neck stiffened from staring up, up.  When at last my neck tired, I lowered my gaze to encounter Rodin’s ‘Thinker,’ skaters twirling at Rockefeller Center, and, on Fifth Avenue, women in fur coats walking tiny dogs with bows above their eyes.   I’d seen all this before, sometimes in color, sometimes in black and white, on large screens and small.  What Hollywood had failed to convey was the noise and grit, the exhaust fumes and the littered gutters.  I was surprised.  The New York of my imagination was modern and clean, too young to show signs of wear.
Exploring this vertical city was in itself so novel, that I didn’t notice at first that my parents had switched roles.  It was my mother - guidebook in hand - who usually led our sightseeing trips to famous places.  The evening before, she would have read up, so she could point out landmarks and identify architectural detail.  She had dreamed of majoring in art history  - instead of textile chemistry as the East German government eventually decreed - and knew how to tell a Romanesque arch from a Gothic and judge the period of a prehistoric ruin by its columns and capitals.  On our last vacation to the Italian Lake District, she’d told me the Roman poet Catullus’ life story as we visited the remnants of his villa.  I’d gotten so interested, I’d forgotten to keep my embarrassed distance.  But in New York, her architectural references were useless, and besides, my father knew Manhattan.  She left her guidebook in her purse as we followed my father’s confident lead.

When we arrived at our first restaurant for dinner, I peered into the gloomy interior.     I’d never seen such a dimly lit room that wasn’t a theater or a cellar.  

“Why is it so dark?”  I asked my father. 

He shrugged.  “ I don’t know.  A lot of American restaurants are like that.  They seem to think it’s elegant.”

My mother wondered:” How can they see what they’re eating?” and started toward an empty table.

“Stop,” my father hissed. My mother froze.  “You have to wait for the hostess to seat you!”  My mother’s shoulders sagged.

 “Why can’t you pick your own table?” I asked.

“That’s just how it’s done,” my father said.   

 As we waited, I soaked up every strange detail.  There were no tablecloths.  The plates and silverware sat directly on wood grain Formica.  Ruby pressed glass goblets held dark red napkins.  Once at our table, we pulled them out and placed them in our laps, and a waitress filled the goblets with ice cubes and water.  My father had told me that Americans put ice in their drinks, but why were they giving us water?  All my life I’d been told not to drink tap water because I’d get sick.  “Smell it, “ my father whispered” it’s full of chlorine.”  That it was.  It smelled like the Krefeld public swimming pool.  I couldn’t overcome a lifetime of training.  I asked my father to order a Cola for me instead

He also ordered shrimp cocktail, salad, steak and a baked potato.  I was excited about the shrimp.  They were such a special, expensive treat.  When they arrived, I was puzzled.  The shrimp were huge.  I bit into one and felt my taste buds wilt.  Compared to the tiny North Sea shrimp we ate at home, they had no flavor.  My father so clearly enjoyed them that I gave them another chance.  They still tasted bland, but I liked the cocktail sauce.  My father said:” They’re just different.  You’ll like them once you get used to them.”

 Our steaks arrived, each one sizzling on a metal platter.   “One of these is as much meat as I normally buy for all of us for dinner! “ my mother exclaimed, as she picked up her fork and knife.    She wrinkled her forehead.  “ I don’t know if I can eat it all.”  

My father grinned.  He promised me that, since meat was so cheap here, we could have steaks every week.  That sounded great to me.  As I dug in with pleasure, my mother fretted.  If she ate the whole steak, she’d get a stomachache.  My father reassured her that Americans didn’t think anything of leaving some food on their plates.  “ And if they don’t want to waste it, they ask for a ‘doggy bag’ and take the rest home,” he explained.  We were both incredulous.  Take food home from a restaurant?  It sounded unspeakably rude and admirably practical at the same time.  Did they really feed it to the dog?   My father shrugged.  How could anyone know?  I’d been making good progress with my steak, but the foil-wrapped baked potato was another mystery.  My father showed us how to split the potato’s top, squeeze it open and scoop out the insides.  I love sour cream, and quickly realized that I could use the potato to indulge in lots of it by slathering each forkful.  

  After that first meal, I was sold on steak and baked potato.  I added the meal to my list of foreign favorites.  In Italy, I’d fallen in love with the custom of sprinkling grated Parmesan into my soups, and I relished the grilled lamb sausages they served in Yugoslavia, the huge selection of cheeses in Denmark and the potato croquettes sold in the streets in the Netherlands.  It hadn’t penetrated yet that I wouldn’t be going home to restaurants where I could count on the menu to feature Schnitzel and Gulaschsuppe. 

Lost Pages: Hair

When I edited Dreaming in German,  the rule was that no publisher would look at a memoir of over 250 pages, so I cut my original manuscript by over a hundred pages.  Today I am going to start a new blog feature. I am calling it "The Lost Pages."  Here's the first installment.

Hair

The battle began when I was eleven.  Or maybe it started before that. because my mother liked short hair and I had succeeded in growing mine out to my shoulders.  What I remember is standing at the window of our hotel room in Zadar, Yugoslavia, three tight beds in the slick room behind me.   Outside, in the distance, a line of cypresses blocks the view of the Mediterranean.  Teenage couples giggles as they walk hand in hand away from the hotel.  My mother, sharp comb in hand, tugs the hair out of my face, tightens it flat to my head with a rubber band.

I hate this.  I want my hair to fly free. I want to part it low on one side and let a swath of hair dip over my eye.  I want... I don’t know what I want, but I don’t want my  mother to comb my hair, pull it out of my face, so I look clean as a licked cat.  I shake my head and whine, “ not so tight, it hurts.”  My mother says,  “Hold still. Stop wiggling.”

Below to the left, closer than the cypresses, tangled vines define the terrace where my family will eat dinner.  Mirko, the Serbian waiter, will glow in his white uniform and treat my like a child.  My mother reaches into the top dresser drawer and pulls out a big bow, the one with the red flowers on it.  It matches the dress I am wearing, the dress my mother has made.

“No.”

My mother hesitates. “ What do you mean, no?”

I stomp my foot, but carefully, just enough that my mother, her hand still resting on my  head, can feel it, but not so much that my father, who is reading on his bed, will hear.  “ I don’t want a bow.”

My mother’s hands fall to her sides.  She says,” At least let me put in the small black one. You need something to cover the rubber band.”

I turn back toward the window as my mother feels for the black bow.  When I bend forward, I can see the fig tree with its light green bundles of fruit.  They are still hard and dry; my father picked one, because I wondered what their insides looked like.  A jungle of bird voices is rising, tropical and wild, cries and screeches twining around each other.  I cannot name these birds.  But  I long to fly with them.