a baby sister
We were living in in Hof when my sister arrived. I remember dad telling me that I had a little sister named Beth, and asking “Does Beth have any teeth?”, but my dad heard my pronunciation as “Does Bef have any teef?”. It isn’t surprising that I wanted to know having often heard mom tell the story about the woman in her home town who had had her nipple bitten off by a nursing child with teeth, and that was why my mother hadn’t been breast fed, having been born with two teeth, one up and one down, her mother wasn’t willing to risk it.
grampas funeral
It wasn’t long after Beth was born that her father died, and she took us kids with her when she flew back for the funeral. We flew space available, sitting on bench seats in a cargo plane, and it was a very long trip to get to Chicago, where her brother Jim picked us up and took us up to Ewen, Michigan, where they had grown up.
When we arrived mom was super tired, and had to go straight to sleep, and we kids joined all the cousins, who were being looked after by towns peoople so the grieving adults in the family wouldn’t have to deal with us. We had a great time playing. Eventually, mom woke, in pain, as it had been way longer than usual since Beth had nursed, and she came stumbling out of the room saying “give me my baby!“
grandma and nanna visit
I think we were still living in Hof when mom’s mom, Grandma and dad’s mom, Nana, came to visit. They were a delight to have around, but they also used the opportunity to travel other places, while they were on this side of the ocean. Between their English, Grandma’s Finnish, and Nanna’s Polish, they were able to find people to communicate with most places they went.
birthday shopping
dad’s birthday
(This was one of mom’s favourite stories to tell about small me.) After we moved to Germany I always told my parents that I couldn’t speak German. However, when Dad’s birthday cane around (it is 16 December), mom gave me some money to head downstairs to buy my dad a present.
There was a shop in the furst floor of the building, owned by a Germany couple, who spoke no English. I wish I could remember how I managed it, and how I communicated my mission, for a short time later I, only a few days past my 4th birthday, came home with a gift wrapped bottle of conac for my dad.
Now as I type this, and there is no one left alive to ask, it occurs to me to wonder if he drank it? He was normally a whisky-water drinker, having been told by a military docter after he first enlisted, and was sent off to Korea (during the Korean War), that the water over there is terrible, and you should purify it with whisky. He purified his water with whisky for most of the rest of his life.
mom’s birthday
A few days later (19 December), it was mom’s birthday, so dad gave me so.e money to go downstairs and buy her a gift. This one isn’t a story that got repeated over and over, and again, I don’t remember the shopping itself.
However, I clearly remember my joy in the pair of beautiful, tall, white, spiral shaped candels that I carried back up the stairs in their gift wrapping, and my tears of devastation when I tripped and they broke against the edge of the stairs as I was on the last flight of stairs up. Dad was standing in the doorway when it happened, and hurried to comfort me.
I don’t recall what happened next, but I bet that they “fixed” It with a little melted wax at the broken bits. If they did, I probably was very aware of the ugly seam, a testament to my misshap, till the candles burnt down past that point. I always did have an eye for thst sort of detail…
Previous home: 04. Visit Michigan and Pennsylvania 1970
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