Be Inspired ...

"…Honor your father and your mother, that you may live long in the land which the Lord your God is giving you."
Exodus 20:12

Which home is He giving us?

* * *

Ma wrote me from Switzerland that she wanted me to visit her before she died. She also wanted me to feel her skull. She said that three men had whacked it, and it felt like corrugated metal. Why had she never told this to Siggi and me? Of course not one of these heroes was ever officially pampered, counseled or rehabilitated for their deeds. Or sent to trial or to jail. Ma had also taped her will to a wall requesting that her cadaver be sent to the medical school in Basel, with the instructions to photograph her skull before the students cut up her corpse.

She wrote me:

“For one year I will remain in a basin filled with formaldehyde, together with people who come from the penitentiary, who have no next of kin to take care of their graves. My skeleton will then be sent to a school in Switzerland. I will ask the Department of Anatomy to take pictures of my skull or send you the address where it will be displayed.”

Enticing attractions for Siggi and me to visit her before we would have to find her in a more gruesome state of being. If she died before we saw her again, she wanted us to study her in her advanced state, and after she would be wasted, her pictures. Does she think that her skull configuration would be a testimony to her life and help justify how she had dealt with it?

For many years Ma had lived with Franz in the village of Moehlin, Switzerland. Since she talked incessantly, we concluded that he must be deaf or nearly so. They were not married and were now in their mid-eighties. She also wrote that she was living in “hell” because one of his children was pushing to evict them both from his old house so he could remodel and rent it.

She also wrote that Franz had lost control over his body. Therefore she did not have time to answer the many questions about our family in writing that I had asked her recently. She had to change his bag several times a day and wash him as well. If we visited her, she would be able to tell me our family history. She still had an excellent memory and had always wanted to write a memoir to tell the world about what men had done to her. I thought that her memory was another lure to catch me so I’d come back to Europe. She had even more time than she had junk and she tried to reel me in. She said that she would answer my questions in person and invited Siggi and me to stay upstairs in Franz’ house. I was sure that even if she literally removed one ton of her stuff to make room for us in her apartment in Rheinfelden, we could not reside there. No one dwells in hell voluntarily, even if it were polished, and I didn’t know if Franz had allowed her hellish décor in his house.

I read Ma’s many letters to me again only to write this memoir, and much of their content was new to me, because I had forgotten, or repressed, so much of the heroic counter-cheerful advice and admonitions that interfered with my objective thinking. But now that I was writing, I was eager to learn what she would have to tell me about our past, and especially about her personal experiences in the horrible world that she had lived in before, during and after the infamous Nazi era. I decided that if I wanted this information from her, I would have to talk to her face-to-face, because judging from her letters, she could not stay focused on any one subject long enough to elaborate about it in a meaningful manner.

Ma was extremely gregarious, but because of a quirk in her personality she had few friends, and her nearest relatives lived hundreds of kilometers away. Over the years Ma had lured us with the material things that she had accumulated since our father had evicted us over forty years ago. She had offered us used furs, violins, accordions and tons of clothes. She was still very poor, and I wondered how she acquired some of these seemingly expensive items. But I was not interested in her material bribes, because they would only be unpleasant reminders cluttering up our home and minds.

Ma threw me a morsel of what I could learn from her in a letter to my wife Linda:

“…My dear grandfather had a sister who was a widow and had a beautiful farm near the railroad in Loppersum, two villages from Emden. She asked an attorney to visit her to draw up her last will and testament. When the good aunt died it was discovered that she was very much taken in. She probably did not understand what she signed. Her beautiful villa and the farm suddenly belonged to this abominable (Ma’s emphasis) attorney. He moved into the villa right away and my dear grandfather got the short end of the deal.”

“…Dear Ami should quit his job, because what is in my memory will earn him more. It would be very interesting for a movie firm to film the attic with the bats where we lived, and the jail in Saeckingen where I had to stay because of my homelessness. This is unique in the world.

“Don’t wait until I can be viewed in the Anatomy Department of the university, dear Ami. Franz isn’t going to live much longer, he breathes heavily every time he moves, and then we will lose our domicile in Moehlin. One can say dark clouds are on the horizon. Another thing, I can help a little with the money. So prepare for the trip. It will be very interesting with your Ma, who has loved you more than any other person.”

Now you tell me that you love me.

* * *

Even though our mother was living in Switzerland, she still kept an apartment in Germany. Its rent was probably paid by the German taxpayers, because some official apparently thought that she actually still lived there. She wrote me that she could not access it now because someone had inserted an object into the lock of its only entrance door. Was it her landlord, an official? Or was it yet another one of Ma’s lonely cries?

As much as wanting to see our mother again, probably for the last time, I also wanted to find the court documents that she assured me were still in her possession. I was curious about how it had been possible for our parents to shred our family for so long and with such intensity. Were there no referees to call for a stop of their insane behavior? I wanted to learn how the laws could be twisted to favor liars and crooks. Siggi and I had learned from outstanding personal experiences that the weaker you are, the more abused you are, and the more exploited you will be. At least this had certainly been true in our case, and I now had a strong desire to inform everyone about our erstwhile plight. I rarely have mentioned anything about our fine background to anyone but my wife. I had learned that if I dropped a tiny hint about it to other people, they did not seem to care or understand and for example would merely say, “When I grew up, we had nothing to eat but beans and potatoes,” thereby taking the wind out of the sails of my story.

At one time we would have dug into real doodoo for beans and potatoes. Most people could not fathom anything worse than having to survive on them, such wonderful food. I could never understand their disinterest or lack of sympathy, until I learned that it was a quirk in human nature to avoid or repress unpleasant situations and associated emotions, and I figured that collectively this could get us into big trouble. For many years I had been too ashamed or too troubled to think about the skeletons in our closet, but now that I am wiser, I am proud of all my wheel-spinning accomplishments to stay alive and forge ahead in life.

Without sacrificing our bodies.

Without losing our minds.

Ma’s court documents and her tales would be a great help to me. I had counted the names of the many lawyers and judges whom she had referred to in her letters, who had helped dissolve, torment and impoverish our “family” in an unending war filled with schemes, lies and threats of murder. Since Ma had referred to the lawyers only in passing, I was sure that more could be added to this already substantial list, and I wanted to learn especially about the absurdities of the German judicial system. I also wanted to find out if it were our unsettled lifestyle that this system had forced upon us that caused, at least in part, my caustic humor and blunt honesty? Or was it mainly Ma’s whip, such an effective and powerful tool? Siggi and I make some people quiver when we confront them with unpleasant truth, and we do this to win friends and influence people. Sadly, too often they have seemed to go into denial, even before understanding what we tried to explain to them.

Siggi has published dozens of articles, and his observations on many issues are unique and out of the mainstream. He wrote a twelve-page abstract called Reflections On Conventional Versus Non-conventional Trade Development to advise on how to boost the economic performance of his state. Another one of his articles was To Liberate Women, Depoliticize Men.

* * *

I wanted to return to the land of my birth, hoping to find the missing pieces in my life. But after returning to my adopted country from previous visits to Europe, weeks would pass before my gloom would lift. I wanted to live in both places, hoping to strengthen my roots by cementing together those that had grown in worlds so far apart.

I weighed the pros and cons of this trip for many months. I wanted to see my mother; I was concerned about her mental and physical health. Would we be able to deal with her aberrant behavior? Would she be able to deal with our foreign behavior? Long ago she had requested me to send her a few toothbrushes, such and such brand and hardness. Recently she wrote that she had ever made only one request of me, to send her toothbrushes. I never did. But later she wrote that she had found a good source of them at the old age home across the street from her. When somebody died in this undertaker’s waiting room, his or her useless belongings were thrown out, and she collected these from its garbage.

Now Ma had accumulated a good supply of brushes. I mentioned this to Siggi and he informed me that when he had visited her during the previous summer, he had found bundles of them rubber-banded together under the bumpy blanket covering her sofa. He had said to her:

“I suppose you saved the one I left here in eighty-six.”

“Ja, naturally,” and she had produced more of them.

“Did you also save the toothpicks that I’ve used.”

“You know I never throw anything away.”

She retrieved the world’s finest used-toothpick collection, while saying:

“I have lived through two world wars, hyperinflation, two depressions and a long divorce. I have lost my children. I cannot throw anything away. You can criticize anything about me, but I forbid you to attack me about my stuff. I know Ich hab’ einen Vogel, I have a bird, I am crazy, and nobody can change that.”

Over the years Siggi had attacked Ma about her hoard, verbally and in writing. I understood her emotional craving for her collection of fine garbage and could forgive her. Twice during her lifetime the German currency had been destroyed and survival had depended on bartering. Her subconscious was afraid that this might become necessary again, thereby causing her to accumulate everything. But Siggi could not accept that. He accused her of valuing her junk more than her family. This was very true. This was very untrue. Whatever the case, Ma could never change.

I understood Siggi’s frustrations and yearnings; they were the same as mine. He boiled in quiet desperation that they could not be resolved. He wanted to find comfort in the home of his mother. And in his mind.

Siggi was going to travel to Europe and would meet me there if I decided to go also. But I had many doubts about the trip: Would we get along together near our former hell? Now Ma was requesting us to come to help her clean her apartment so she could die in peace. We were not sure how to search out the mementos that we might want from there. Something in us craved for them; but we were also pained by them. Should we haul her stuff to the dump? Should we give it away? Would there be anything useful? We’d find childhood memorabilia in schoolbooks and toys that we had crafted. We knew that all of these would still be there, buried in deep clutter, as had been the memories of them in my soul. What would we do with our frail mother? What if she died from the excitement or torment of our visit? Should we bury her or carry her corpse in a suitcase to the university in Basel and deliver her “To Whom It May Concern?” Was Ma’s request her final attempt to gain sympathy from someone, anyone? Would I be emotionally strong enough to be able to inspect her skull? What other secrets did she keep? Did I even want to know? Had she suppressed them, because they had been too painful? Could I find the loose screws in her head?

My questions and doubts could only be resolved if I returned; therefore I decided to make this trip. This would be the first time that our mother, my brother and I would be together in thirty-five years, and we would have a fine time. We were a closely-knit family; we were a blown up family. When I had received the announcement of my father’s death in the seventies, my only comment at that time had been, “Well, the old bastard finally croaked.” I went into the bedroom and closed the door. Then I cried. But I do not know if I cried for myself or for my father.

* * *

Siggi picked me up at the Zurich airport, where he had rented a car, and we drove to Rheinfelden, Germany, to stay at a bed and breakfast. It was the middle of summer and central Europe was suffering from a hundred-year heat wave. In addition, there was almost no air conditioning or insect window screening, and I wondered how the walls of my room had gotten so bloody. To keep cool, I had to keep my window open at night, and I soon figured out that no one had been murdered here. During my nightly mosquito hunts, I also added to the décor of my room with Type A negative blood splatter.

The day following my arrival, while still suffering jetlag, we drove to Switzerland to visit our mother. Without previous announcement we walked into her “living room,” where she and Franz were sitting in immense disorder watching television. She was wearing two pairs of glasses, on top of each other, so she could see better and removed one pair so she could see us even better, as her face momentarily lit up before turning to a frown. Her body was frail with a slight dowager’s hump that mismatched her much younger face which had surprisingly few wrinkles and no “age spots.”

“Ami!”

A bubble of joy momentarily rose in her soul. We did not exchange greetings, did not hug, even though I had resolved to do so. Ma’s mouth kicked into action, not with advice as before, but with subtle excuses and reasons for her past behavior. Thoughts burst forth rapidly, skipping from subject to subject. Pointing to a photo of her young father hanging on the wall, she said:

“He hanged himself. When I was small, I prayed: Dear God, I wish my father were dead. Amen.”

I interrupted her: “Ma, how are you?” wanting to bring our conversation to a more soothing level. But this was not possible. Years of brooding kept pouring from her soul and Siggi and I could not stop her.

She presented me with a strap, holding it as if to sell me a tie.

“See this. This is what I used to spank you with.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t remember it but I remember two others. They were made of rubber and wire.” I did not know why I said that because I did not feel any animosity towards her, only sadness. I thought it to be a miracle that she had lived this long, physically intact, and apparently suffering only a form of organic brain syndrome. I’m not a doctor, but it seems reasonable that a dented brain could be the physical cause of her behavioral abnormality.

Before too long Siggi rushed out of the room. The pain?

“I’ll wait for you in the car, Neuman,” he said to me on his way out.

Not long thereafter I followed him out. The pain! My fourth visit with our mother in thirty-five years ended in twenty-five to thirty-five minutes. Numbly, we drove back across the Rhine River to cruise aimlessly around the city of my birth, speaking little as we passed through our old neighborhoods. Everything was so prosperous, clean and well maintained even though Rheinfelden was still mostly a factory town. The German middle class had greatly expanded, and had grown a lot wealthier as well, while many areas in America had stagnated or declined, twisted statistics notwithstanding. This also caused me pain.

Two days later we made another courageous charge on Franz’s house and immediately asked Ma for the key to her German apartment.

“You cannot go there alone. I will go with you,” Ma insisted.

“But why? We want to go there alone,” I said.

“No, I will go with you!”

Siggi and I did not want her along, because she would add to our homesickness, or whatever our complex, convoluted emotions could be called. She’d cackle with advice and draw the attention of her neighbors. As older children we had not wanted to be with her in public because of her incessant advising and instructing. Although she had a sweet, beautiful face, it contradicted her overbearing personality and irrational behavior. For years her neighbors must have wondered about the things that she had dragged into her home. Therefore we wanted to sneak in now and take a quiet survey of her German nest. But she insisted on going also. Since she could crash stone walls with her delicate bullhead, we relented, and the three of us drove to her apartment, while heat and gloom filled our car, and we spoke little. We walked up one flight of stairs, where Ma fumbled for the right key among a messy bundle of strings, keys and safety pins. Hurry up, someone might see us.

She finally found the right one, opened the door, and I noticed that there was no obstruction in the lock as she had claimed. A wave of repugnant, intensely antique odor rolled over us from the dark vestibule. Without a word, Siggi pushed Ma inside to escape the neighbors’ prying eyes. I held my breath, because it was hard to breathe in hell, and Siggi cussed, stepping back out. He had always treated his body with care; more so than I. It was much easier to soothe your body than it was to soothe your soul.

“Open the windows,” he exclaimed.

I groped for a light switch and flipped it on, but the power had been shut off years ago. This was the first time that I had been here, because Ma had moved to this apartment after my last visit. In the sweltering darkness I tried to push open the door to the next cell in hell.

What I saw was worse than I had anticipated. The entire cell was a tangled sculpture created by a tormented mind. It was the core of a frozen tornado. Clutter hurled against the walls, vortexing up to the ceilings. Boxes, bike wheels, lamps, newspapers and clothing. There were hundreds of objects, all crammed, mangled and pickled in a tomb-like atmosphere. I climbed through the vortex, bored my way to the window that was hidden on the far side and covered with a moth-eaten blanket. I opened it as far as I could. Barely breathing, I struggled to the next compartment to open another hole to the world. Though sweating, I was unaware of my physical discomfort, because the heat, the mustiness and the motherly creations had temporarily numbed my mind.

As I groped around, I realized that she had not lived here for many years, because all of the kitchen and bathroom fixtures were totally buried as well. I looked for artifacts from my youth: drawings, toys, school papers and books, anything from my previous life. Of the thousands of objects in Ma’s shrine I recognized only the rounded top corner of an imbedded old wardrobe. Two mattresses were stacked on top of it, wedged between it and the ceiling. Who lifted them? Who knows about this shrine?

The long-forgotten feeling of shame and disgust anguished me again. Once more I had that sinking feeling in my heart and belly. As I stumbled back out of the apartment, Siggi came back up the staircase. I exhaled and inhaled deeply.

“Did you open some windows?” he asked me.

“Two of them, but not very far. Too much junk in the way,” I responded.

“You better let this place air out before you get sick,” Siggi admonished me. Then he said, “What is causing that stink?”

“Smells like mothballs, mouse seasoning and mother’s armpits to me,” I responded.

Ma had always been worried about moths. They destroyed; therefore they had to be destroyed. Courageously, I ventured back in to explore our catacombs. Siggi followed. Ma was wedged in the tangle of her dominion, lost in thought, scrutinizing some papers and was unaware of us. Her face was serious, the way I remembered it from my childhood.

Little bird, I will explain when you’re older.

“Where are the court documents?” I startled her.

“In that cupboard,” she responded, pointing to one side.

I moved clutter to get to the doors of a dining room cabinet. Carelessly I tossed things aside, causing dust to rise to enhance hell’s miasma. I moved more cautiously. Its first compartment contained only plastic flowers. I thought this to be odd because I had never seen such in this land before. There was no plastic on the graves or in the flower boxes; there was little plastic anywhere. I worked open doors and drawers but all were filled with old newspapers, to be read again some day, to refresh the ammunition for Ma’s admonitions.

I lost hope that I would find what I came here for. It would take days of hard work to lift, throw, bore and search through this mess, or to move most of everything to the outside to get down to the mother lode, to discover the items that were deposited there so long ago. Like archeologists, we would have to remove the surface layers to get to the fossils that we were searching for. We could heave stuff out of the window into dumpsters while hiding inside. But Ma would not permit this and scream hysterically, besides it was muggy and hot, and there was no power to run a fan to cool us. Would her neighbors send for the police when violins and sitz baths were flying out of a second-story window? Would we have to buy beer to bribe a policeman? But Siggi and I were too honest to bribe anyone; we would just get arrested. Besides I did not have the heart to sever Ma from her precious collection. It belonged to her. It belonged to me.

Quietly the three of us riffled through separate graves where we could stand up only at the doorways. I was curious and venturesome and crawled around the top of Ma’s belongings, often stooping to clear the ceiling. This was a new experience for me because like a daring circus performer, I had to balance on broom handles, coffeepots and many other unusual objects of support. I found something worthwhile, a bundle of new toothbrushes, still in their original wrappings, and put them in my pocket. When Ma came to the entrance of my tomb I tossed them to her.

“Here, you wanted some toothbrushes,” I said. She dismissed me with a disgruntled wave, and I did not pick them up.

The heat of hell soon drove Siggi and me back out. We told Ma that we had had enough, locked up and went back to our rental car. On the way, I instinctively scanned the windows around us. I had forgotten this feeling, this demeanor from so long ago, my feeling of shame and my desire to be invisible. Now I willed myself to be invisible again. I knew that all of the world’s eyes were upon us because I could feel their mockery: There is that crazy old woman again. Those must be her sons. I’m not her son. I’m not even German.

Because I could not have a focused conversation with Ma, it was all the more important for me to find the court documents. After our unsuccessful exploratory expedition, I tried to dispel my gloom with objective thoughts, while the three of us silently returned to Moehlin, where we left Ma with Franz without a goodbye.

When I get back home I’ll have Insensitivity Training.

* * *

The hot, muggy days passed while Siggi and I drove around in the villages near where we were born. We had come to tour and sightsee, as well as to visit relatives in Germany and Switzerland. But we could not leave the place that oppressed us, the grave of our souls.

This is my home! There has to be a mother, there has to be a father! Maybe we could be reborn. We stopped to visit many churches, to find relief inside from the humid heat and to admire their treasures. Many of them were unlocked and unattended every day and this impressed me.

“In America it would not be possible to keep the churches unlocked,” Siggi said to me. “They would be destroyed within hours or days,” he continued.

“Why would they do that? You and I never even thought of deliberately destroying anything. Many of the experts might agree that we could be justified to rape, pillage and murder,” I said.

“Yea, shall we start right now? With our ol’ lawyers?” Siggi replied.

“Then if we get caught, we can say we made mistakes,” I continued, “and be pampered and rehabilitated. The only thing I ever destroyed intentionally was the antenna on your father’s car. I was mad at him and took a swipe at it. Broke it off. Even felt guilty then.”

The churches had been very expensive to build, like all of the houses, and I had seen few such in America. The interiors were decorated with bright colors and intricate carvings; even the ones built since World War II were adorned with large colorful frescoes and had lofts with huge pipe organs. But I was almost apathetic about their outstanding quality, craftsmanship and great beauty and would simply snap a picture or two and go back outside. The gloom would not lift from my soul.

Even though, or because, Western Germany had been building and renovating more churches after WWII than it had at any time in its history, we discovered that they were almost empty, even on Sundays. There were few worshippers, and we wondered why so much had been spent to build so many churches when so few people attended them. Worthwhile or not, can a tax remain in place indefinitely? No free market balancing supply and demand? Historical guilt and shame?

For dinner Siggi and I often returned to the same restaurant in the Black Forest because it was cooler there, with less air and noise pollution. We needed peace. Often we had to wait a long time to be served, for a good meal can take a long time to prepare. Sometimes we spoke little and at other times we discussed our past at great length. We even joked about it. We had the weirdest and funniest parents on earth; two fools who should have been born two days earlier, on April Fool’s day.

“What shall we do about your mother’s junk?” I questioned Siggi.

“That’s not my problem. I’ve come to realize that for most of my life your parents have burdened me. And this junk of your mother. I’ve told her many times that she valued it more than her children. Therefore I have no responsibility to clean it up,” Siggi answered.

“We don’t have parents. We are only by-products of their encounters,” I responded. “There are a few things I want from her apartment.”

“Ma said that she had three thousand marks in there,” Siggi returned.

“Could we rent a dumpster, park it below the window, and just throw her stuff into it?”

“We could. But can you?”

“I am not sure, it would be too depressing. And it is so hot and stinky in there.”

We could not throw out the treasures of our mother. We could not throw out the presently biggest burden in our lives.

“The Sozialamt provided her this apartment. They helped with her creation. Let them clean it out,” suggested Siggi.

“Yeah, but the shame. All I want is those court documents. Otherwise, why did I travel so far? I cannot stand to visit Ma even though I want to. I even want to hug her to help heal pain. You don’t want to drive very far because of all the traffic. Even these beautiful villages are depressing. I will have to return to the States and look at trailer huts. I read that in my state as many as one out of eight people live in mobile homes.”

“So far we have not seen a single trailer house. Some of these houses are hundreds of years old. And still look new. Even the new ones will last that long,” Siggi responded.

As far as we could tell, the land of our birth was changing, and for the better. Judging by the homes and yards, it was difficult to distinguish between the rich and the poor neighborhoods. Even to view only the entrance doors to these homes was like visiting an art museum. Most of them appeared to have been handcrafted. Many were custom-made of hammered or cast bronze, iron, oak or stained glass.

There were few signs cluttering the landscape. For example, a veterinarian simply advertised with a cast-metal sculpture of stylized cats and dogs in the front of his building, and the entrance door was of the same design and forged of the same metal as well. There were no written words such as “Veterinarian.”

During his visits here over the years, Siggi had taken many pictures of cemeteries, houses and restaurants. He had photographed some of them repeatedly because of the great improvements being made to them between his visits. A restaurant might have the simple words, Café Sonne, Café of the Sun, which in later years would have been replaced by a gilded iron sun hanging from an ornate, black wrought iron bracket from the side of the building. We inspected a door to a village restaurant that was made of a one-inch thick tempered glass panel set behind a heavy, hand-forged, ornamental wrought iron grille. In all my travels around the world I had never seen so much consistent and widespread quality, combined with such man-made beauty, as in this country and some other European countries as well.

I noticed that the seemingly oversized rain gutters and downspouts on the houses were made of copper. This prompted me to find the cheapest ones, so we kept looking for them as we drove around. We thought that we had finally found them on a house, and after we stopped for a closer look, we discovered that these downspouts were not made of plastic, iron or aluminum but of welded stainless steel.

“These people have pride. They build everything to last a thousand years,” Siggi said to me.

“But in America we have Desert Sky Mobile Home Estates, with flags flying. Here there are no estates,” I replied sarcastically. “But things are not so rosy here either.”

“What do you mean? Look around you. Where can you find so much beauty in America?”

“Mostly with the rich, mostly in nature, but remember what got us to America,” I said to him.

Siggi could not acknowledge the problems in Germany, and his temper rose instantly. Every morning at breakfast we read the newspapers about dioxin-polluted eggs, dying forests, and the pollution theme was constant in the news media. We had looked at a polluted area in Rheinfelden that was located next to the house of our former friend, Juergen, where Siggi and I had camped in his backyard as children. This half-block was now cordoned off, and no one was allowed to enter. Its soil was contaminated with dioxin to a depth of more than one hundred eighty feet and would be very expensive to remove and process.

Juergen’s backyard was also the place where someone had stolen our new tent in the middle of the night. I remember it well. We had pitched our small new tent there; it was to be our haven away from our hot attic during the warm summer nights. We had kept our bedding and our beebee gun in it, along with a few other things. Late one night we had heard the cracking of the tiny grenades that children threw during celebrations. Wrapped in paper, these blew up on impact. Crack. Crack. We had crawled out of our tent with our gun and had found no one outside, but I had yelled, “Shoot whoever is hiding out there.” I had wanted to intimidate whoever was there, so that he would leave us in peace.

The next night it had rained, so we had stayed in our batty attic and had left our tent in place. During that night Juergen’s mother thought that she had heard the firecrackers again, and the following morning our tent and its content was gone. The thief had wanted to wake us, to check if we were sleeping in it, to determine if he could steal our home away from home. We hadn’t been paranoid enough to anticipate such a clever robbery scheme.

This very area next to Juergen’s house was now identified as the most dioxin-polluted site in the world. During the reconstruction after WWII, the bomb craters around Rheinfelden had been filled with the toxic waste from the factories as well. Later I learned from a website in Switzerland, that that waste had also been used to remodel this entire townscape until well into the seventies. Someone had bargained with the devil, and only now was this evil deed being publicized. I would have to be paid at least fifteen dollars before I’d pollute the earth in such a fashion! Who was punished for this? Who was rewarded for this? Who might suffer from this? Who will be sued?

We also read that the trees were dying in the Black Forest, so we drove to the higher elevations to verify this and found it to be the case. They would be dead forever. There might never be trees here again, at least not certain kinds. Billboards explained the cycle of pollution, the nitrogen and heavy metals that fell from the sky and were taken up by the soil and the trees. How can such poisons ever be cleaned from mountains and streams?

* * *

As we waited for our meals to arrive, we studied the menu of our favorite village restaurant. It was always quiet here. It was quiet in all of the restaurants that we visited, except when there was a big crowd. I made the observation that there was never any background music playing in stores, restaurants and other such public places, and I was able to converse more easily. I wondered why the difference between here and the noisier equivalent locales in America. I could only guess as to the difference and have not yet learned why this was so. Were deaf, acoustically-challenged people not included in the extensive handicap laws?

“Look at all these entrees,” Siggi said to me.

We counted the drinks listed on the menu of this country inn. There were one hundred forty-two different beverages, everything from dozens of brands of beer and wine to various undiluted fruit juices and many different mixtures made from them.

After we enjoyed a delicious dinner I said to my brother, “I am going to find those divorce documents.”

We had kept Ma’s keys from our first safari to her apartment. They were a messy collection of every type ever invented, including ancient skeleton keys. It took Siggi and me several days to regain our nerves to return there and did so several more times during our sojourn. We dug around in her helter-skelter but only for short periods each time. Reaching into crannies, to search for files, I found a plastic bag containing glossy porno magazines. I scanned the naked couples in wonderfully interlocking and contorted positions…Did Ma find these in her garbage mines?

I pulled out an egg carton filled with black, shriveled fruit from under a cupboard. It was garnished with mouse droppings, the inescapable spicing from my slavery days. There was a half-liter carton of unopened, ancient orange juice and many other exotic delicacies. Finally I discovered a foot-thick bundle wrapped in newspapers, tied securely with string. I pulled it from its crypt and noted that its date of publication was 1952, about the time of the divorce of our parents. So many years ago. I tore open a corner, determined that these could be some of the files that I wanted and placed them into a bright-yellow Elmer Citro brand backpack that happened to be nearby.

“Siggi, I found something. Let’s go.” Documentation of our disaster.

We locked up Ma’s secret warehouse and drove into a forest, parked our car, and opened the rucksack to inspect our find. A musty odor escaped from the file folders which mostly contained letters that were written by our parents, including a few from relatives and some official documents. It was obvious that these files were prepared as evidence for the court. One of them contained only love letters that our father had written to our mother before they were married. Saving letters was in our genes because I had also done so all of my life and Siggi probably as well. Quietly we studied our newly found bundle of garbage, our new treasure, in the darkening forest. We hardly knew our father and were anxious to learn more about him.

I was disappointed that most of the official papers were not in this bundle. There would have to be hundreds of documents generated during the subsequent fourteen, fifteen or more years of court activities. We discovered that this bundle was only for the initial divorce process between our father and our first mother. Therefore we made a few more attempts to find more court files, but by the time we had to return to America, we could not find any others. The biggest reason for this was that we could not bring ourselves to dwell in Ma’s warehouse long enough to search for them. Like workers handling hazardous materials, we limited our exposure to keep within reasonable health guidelines.

Siggi and I never threw out one single one of Ma’s items, leaving it all behind in forgotten silence.

* * *

Before we flew back to America, we returned Ma’s keys to her. We arrived at her place in Moehlin at about eleven fifteen. Siggi stayed in our car, as he could not face his mother again. A long lost son could not face his brain-whacked mother anymore. I still wanted to talk with her at great length, and also assure her that I was not bitter about what she, Pa and so many countrymen had done for us. At one time Ma had written that, “What we will never forgive is that the police never helped us when our ‘father’ wanted to kill us. Poor Ami has required years to overcome the consequences of this terrible intimidation.” Had she never realized that this had been only one tiny incident in my seemingly unending intimidation, and that my most painful and intense one, aside from our wonderful WW II experiences, had always been her whip? Oddly, I have always felt differently about forgiveness than Ma. As I have never suffered from envy, I also feel blessed that I have never felt bitter about our parents because such bitterness would probably have destroyed me long ago. Instead of bitterness I suffered sadness, but I have always attempted to live my life at its fullest. I also wanted to tell Ma that I did not blame her for anything.

With a mixture of bravado and trepidation, I entered Ma’s living room. Within minutes of my arrival, she realized that it was nearly eleven-thirty, lunchtime at the old age home.

Without any greetings, Ma accused me: “You came just during lunchtime so you would not have to stay very long.”

“I did not realize that your lunch starts this early,” I replied dumbfoundedly.

“I have to go now, or the Altersheim will get mad with me because I’ve reserved lunch for today,” Ma continued. “I could tell you many interesting stories. And you come just before lunch. Don’t you have a heart? Forty-two people who have tormented me are now dead, or very ill. Remember that, Ami.”

My mother threatened me with a grim, sad look. A familiar emotional bomb from our past hit me again. Like so many times before, it destroyed all of my objective thoughts. I did not say, “Dear Mama, don’t worry, we’ll tell the Altersheim you won’t eat there today. Or maybe I could eat there also.”

Instead I said, “I’m leaving. Good bye.”

“Will you take this to the city hall in Rheinfelden?” she asked me, while handing me a sheet of paper. It appeared to be a form that she had filled out for the Sozialamt, to reserve a place for herself in a German Altersheim.

“No I won’t take it, but I will mail it for you and pay the postage.”

Ma followed me out of the house, insisting that I take her form, but I obstinately refused. Her stubbornness further shut down my objectivity. With a final wave of rejection, paper in hand, she shuffle-jogged down the sidewalk to her lunch. Her long white hair was fluttering about her battered skull. Sadly, I watched her; she never looked back and disappeared around the corner of a building. I resisted my urge to run after her. And hug her. But I was not even man enough to yell out that I loved her.

* * *

Siggi and I flew back to America on different flights. On my way from Zurich to New York, I visited with a young man from Oman who sat next to me. While waiting for our next flights, we continued our talk and he insisted on buying me a drink. During my next stop, O’Hare Airport, I waited in a deserted hall for another connecting flight, while admiring a man gracefully floating though the motions of T’ai Chi Chuan by a high glass wall.

“What is he doing?” I heard someone say behind me.

I turned to discover a man who was wearing a long, threadbare coat. I explained to him what little I knew about this ancient Chinese exercise. Then he told me that he had been robbed on the subway and had lost his wallet. He showed me his injured wrist, where the thief had torn off his watch as well. His old-fashioned, horn-rimmed glasses, which had broken during the shuffle, were held together with cellophane tape. But I was suspicious of his story because his clothes looked a little shabby, like the ones I always used to wear.

“I have to get to Virginia and need some money,” he said to me.

“How would you get there?”

“I would take the bus,” he responded.

“How much will it cost?” I asked him.

“I need twenty dollars.”

We had a long discussion; he was intelligent and well read and this impressed me. He told me that his wife was from Joburg, Johannesburg, and that they now lived in Israel. He said that if I gave him this amount, he would send me a copy of a book that he’d written. I told him that I would like to read it, but that I might not be able to understand its contents. Regardless, I gave him the money because his book would be a fascinating souvenir.

In our many travels we had found people who had been very friendly and helpful to us. In Australia, Linda and I had bought something, and the clerk had insisted that we did not have to pay for our purchase. In France, a traveler had bought us sandwiches, while at another time, we had returned a like favor to a lady on a train in Italy. I liked Italians. They had fiery spirits and fit my liking of the wildest, the mostest, the fastest, the…. Linda and I had observed two dark-eyed women arguing with each other. They had gestured vivaciously and shouted melodiously, as if acting out an opera scene, and their language was music to my ear.

And we also had met a few people who were not so kind to us. I had let an older German gentleman step onto the train ahead of me because we had a lot of luggage with us. He entered the doorway and lingered there as if no one else wanted to get in behind him. Forgetting what I had been taught so long ago, to have respect for my elders, and without saying a word, I placed our biggest suitcase on his foot. He moved forward and said nothing as if he hadn’t felt a thing.

I remembered other Sauerkraut that I could have done without. After Linda and I had visited Aunt Adele on her farm in East Frisia, we took a taxi to the city of Emden. We had told the driver in English to take us to a hotel and did not let him know that I could understand German. I was an American and played the role. He told us that he knew of a good hotel and would take us there. But before we arrived in Emden, we asked him to take us to a hotel near the railroad station instead, so we would be able to walk there in the morning and save a taxi fare. But he insisted on taking us to his hotel. When we arrived there, he hurried into it, closing the door behind him, even though we had not paid him or gotten our suitcases out of his trunk. I rushed after him and heard him say to the clerk “Dies sind Amerikaner, verstehen Sie, these are Americans, do you understand?”

When I then heard this clerk repeat, “Dies sind Amerikaner, verstehen Sie?” to the porter, I remembered little firecrackers in the night. Crack. Crack. I knew that someone would try to take advantage of us, but I did not yet know when and how and would have to be vigilant. The porter led us to our room in a house next door, and I found that its lock was broken. Knowing that this was highly unusual in this land, since Germans always build things that are difficult to break, window hardware being up to ten times as massive as its American counterpart, I told Linda “I’ll bet the window won’t lock either.” This was the case, and it appeared that it had been intentionally disabled.

We blocked our door with a chair and went to bed. But I could not sleep. At about four in the morning, I heard someone tinkering outside our door. I cleared my throat to let them know that I was awake and heard the would-be thief run away. That’s when I finally fell asleep. When we checked out of this joint late that morning, the clerk asked me if we had slept well.

“Yes,” I forced the lie.

After I paid for our room, he asked me again: “Did you really sleep well?”

Linda and I did meet kind German strangers as well. We had landed very early one morning at the Frankfurt airport and took a taxi to a hotel in this city. There was yet very little traffic, and our driver was in such a hurry that he drove across two, and three, lanes through some curves. Linda again left finger marks in her seat. When we checked into the hotel and told the clerk about our exhilarating ride, he offered us a free hotel room for the remainder of that night.

Another kind stranger that we met in this land was at the ruins of the Roetteln castle. While we were paying to visit it, I casually mentioned to the ticket agent that the German middle class appeared to be getting a lot richer than its American counterpart. This prompted him to let us visit these ruins free of charge.

* * *

On my long flight back I wondered why I had taken this trip. I had found only a very small portion of the files that I wanted from Ma and had visited only a few relatives after Siggi already had returned to the States. For one long month we had been immersed in stifling heat and gloom from our past, and our visit with our mother had been a disaster. Again. She had written us for help to clean out her apartment, so she “could die in peace.” When we arrived there, she did not ask us to do so, and we had left it as we had found it. Would she not now be able to die in peace?

Had her request to clean up only been another bait to lure us to visit her? Or did she not ask us to help because it would be too great a trauma to part with her material collection that she had acquired as an emotional anchor? Why could she not exchange her junk pile, her treasure, for the great pleasure of having two sons that she so longed for? To always be together with the two heroes that she had created? Did we not want…

“Not universal love
But to be loved alone.”?

* * *

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