okay, here's your laugh for today: my badge is now swimming with the fishes.
or at least it is trying too. my id badge and security pass fell out of my pants pocket and into the toilet this morning at work and is now lodged in there requiring facilities to come and remove it.
and for me to get a replacement for it, 'cause that's just nasty.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
adventures in deutscheland
Okay, so this is the story of a family vacation, you see. Just your average, ordinary summer travel abroad experience – losing children, sweating through death marches over mountains, dodging life-threatening lightning strikes and being held at the airport looking down the barrel of machine gun. Well, average for my family, at least.
From the front, my brother’s hair looked like a jack o’ lantern’s smile. What remained of his shaggy brown hair lay mashed against the curved, inside window of the airplane as he stared at the patchwork quilt below us. The center part of his bangs had been cut away – “you’ve been scalped,” my mother exclaimed when she first noticed his hair – the result of a haircut he decided to give to himself one day. The same one he gave his precious ALF doll, too. With the hedge clippers. He said he had to do it; the hair kept tickling his face.
As our plane ascended through the clouds, he began to hum to himself when he could no longer make out the tiny city below while attempting to find our street, our house and the people who looked like the ants he liked to stomp on at home. As our altitude climbed, his excitement over heading to see mountains, real mountains in Germany began to bubble outwardly. “Head for… the MOUNTains of … Buschhh… beeeeer…” he hummed softly to himself as he continued to watch the friendly skies. Somewhere a weary marketing exec formed a tear – his jingle had firmly planted itself into the psyche of an unsuspecting person. The fact that it was a 5-year-old wouldn’t matter so much. One day he would be of legal drinking age.
Meanwhile I sat in the aisle seat, gripping the armrests as we tipped back in our seats, ears popping as if underwater. Between us sat our mother, eyes fixed on the lighted sign above our heads, waiting for the “ding” from the ‘no smoking’ sign to tell her she could now light a cigarette from the ones tucked in her handbag beside her.
The year was 1985. The Cold War was hot. People still feared an evil empire lurking behind the Iron Curtain. AIDS was slowly being recognized as more than just a gay disease. “New Coke” failed to revolutionize the soft drink industry.
And people were still smoking on planes, something my little lungs got to experience for the full six- and one-half-hour flight to Germany that summer. Hell, the Berlin Wall was still standing when we arrived on Germany’s soil. It was just my family that was breaking down at the time.
I was 9-years-old and chubby young girl with a long, blond ponytail that swung behind me when My parents were still together the summer we decided to visit my favorite aunt and uncle, the only relatives not living in our soon-to-be ghetto fabulous neighborhood. At the time they lived in a small town in West Germany. Stationed, really, because that is what it is called when the military tells you to move someplace.
But for me, any time spent with my childless aunt and uncle was special. Excluding the disastrous summer spent with them when my aunt vowed she would teach me how to swim. Or die trying. As if teaching a chubby girl straight out of an urban jungle how to swim would not be a traumatic experience. I feared sinking like a lead weight with only flimsy Styrofoam blocks strapped to my round little spandex-clad belly; the YMCA instructors’ feared summer could not end quickly enough.
But on this visit, my aunt and uncle weren’t childless any longer. Another chubby cheeked girl joined our family with the arrival of my cousin, Sarah, who at only a month old was the sole reason for our transatlantic journey. My mom had wanted to visit her younger sister and see her niece. If by doing so, she got a chance to do it overseas, all the more reason to go. “We’ll make a family vacation of it,” she said.
Completely ignoring the fact my father hated to fly.
Let me put it this way: as much standing on the edge of diving board looking down into the water made my blood run cold, flying did the same for him. A gripping, icy fear that refused to shake loose until it decided to take your bowels with it along the way. But my father, rather than throw the tantrum that I did from the edge of the diving board, crying and screaming until one of the instructors agreed to get in the pool to “catch me” while the other instructor pushed me off my perch on the diving board – he merely decided to stay home. He said someone needed to stay home to feed the cat. This is the same cat that would have preferred to have us leave her alone permanently. She would have seen our abandonment as a true sign of her authority over all humans had we left her behind with say, a few full bowls of food and a house of solitude. No, my dad pledged to stay home if only to just remind the cat exactly who was boss.
So at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, I began making memories of my family as a three-member unit, even though it would take nearly four more years before we officially became one.
When my mother handed me a few crumbled dollar bills to purchase them from a street corner vending machine, it didn’t seem like a big deal. She had sent me numerous times before to the corner pharmacy at home to buy them for her so this routine trip didn’t seem to faze her.
My mother wasn’t a bad mother; she was clueless sometimes.
I took the money and walked out of my aunt’s apartment on the U.S. Army base in Garmisch-Partenkirchen where they were living while stationed in Germany. I walked along the Army base’s circuitous and blindly similar streets. I walked right off the base, past towering chain link fences, topped with barb wire, past stores of olive green tanks and other machinery and past low, mirrored glass buildings hiding secrets only my little mind could imagine.
Wandering along and listening to the sounds of crickets chirping and lawns being mowed I must have become lost in my own thoughts because I never did find that damn cigarette machine. Somehow in my head, the route that my mother described, and same one I saw in my mind’s eye as I nodded along with her directions, failed to materialize.
So I kept walking.
Goddess knows where I walked to that morning. I remember crossing over a large intersection after leaving the confines of the base into the little town where the buildings took on ancient feel with their painted scenes and wooden shutters and flower boxes filled with colorful displays. Eventually, I recognized a little yellow hotel where we boarded a bus for a daytrip earlier in our stay. The crowd of blue-haired ladies waiting to board a bus gave it away.) The hotel, I thought to myself, it had to sell cigarettes. Undaunted, I walked into the hotel lobby to buy that elusive pack of cigarettes that my mother sent me in search of.
Somehow, I failed to remember I was in a foreign country and as smart as I thought I was, I couldn’t speak German. Why the front desk clerked didn’t try to send me back to the institution for mentally handicapped after repeated attempts at communicating my need for cigarettes after realizing the language barrier – hands in my face waving about, making big dramatic puffs on my imaginary cigarette before giving up, and showing him my crumbled dollar bills – I’ll never know. (Why the clerk didn’t try to call German social services for a strange child wandering about by herself I’ll never know, either. Of course, it was 1985.)
After sneaking one last quick look around the dark lobby for a vending machine, I darted back outside into the bright sunlight, defeated and began to backtrack to my aunt’s apartment.
I managed to wind my way back onto U.S. soil before I felt threatened for the first time that day. But the figure running toward me bid me no harm, the sweaty, red-faced body was my mother. Panic-stricken when I didn’t come back right away, her mind began to wrap itself around what she had done. Her young daughter. Alone. In a foreign country. Who doesn’t speak the language. Walking the streets ALONE. BECAUSE SHE TOLD HER TO.
Realizing her chance of winning the mother-of-the-year award was probably shot to hell, she did what she does best – freak out. While my imaginative waters may run deep, my mother’s runs as wide as the Mississippi. I feared my cheeks being pinching by a pack of blue-hairs as I made my way through the parking lot and into the hotel lobby; my mother feared kidnapping. Her blue-eyed, blonde little girl would be scooped up by a childless, East German couple, forced to live the dull gray existence that Communists lived, not the Technicolor world of democracy and the good, ol’ U.S. of A. Or worse, she feared her daughter was smashed by hooligan cars like those we saw on the Autobahn and would be carried off to some German hospital, unable to speak for herself (that language thing again), or even worse still … unable to speak at ALL. Yes! Her daughter would be completely incapacitated and –
By now, my aunt had finally reached her limit. “Go look for her already if you’re that worried. Don’t just sit there,” she told her. My aunt was always the more pragmatic one of the two sisters. (Of course, she was also sleep-deprived and only one month into this whole “mothering thing”, but I’d like to believe it was more of her nature showing through rather than her maternal instinct just hadn’t kicked in yet.) And with that needed swift kick in the pants, my mother set out to find me.
In reality, I have no idea how long I was gone. I don’t remember getting sunburned on the adventure which surely would have been the case had my pale little self had been traveling too long in the mountain sunshine, and it certainly was not weeks or days. But it did eerily foreshadow my teenage years, when after thankfully finding me not dead in a ditch somewhere; she would then threatened to kill me for making her believe I was. By the time, my red-faced mother caught up with me, her panic had reached a crescendo with each ditch she passed that I didn’t lay face first in.
Her panic was palpable as she screeched from fifty yards, “Where were you all this time?” (I would revisit this exact phrase again as a teenager many times.) But hearing it now for the first time because – 1.) I had never ventured this far alone before, and 2.) I had never ventured so far alone in a foreign country – made me take it to heart. She suddenly made me afraid for things I hadn’t realized, all the dangerous possibilities she saw in her mind.
In my innocence, I set out on my simple task to deliver cigarettes to my mother at her request. I never feared for my safety. One long, sweaty hug later, she led me by the arm, quickly dragging me back to my aunt’s apartment before my aunt alerted the authorities of my disappearance. Along the way I listened to her litany of things that could have happened to me.
But somehow for all the crap she put me through (though if asked, she would swear that I put her through much worse), it obviously did not stop her from letting my brother and I play at the playground within a few days of nearly losing me to the East German kidnapping rings. Never mind that this was West Germany, the land where Mercedes were as plentiful as Hondas are today and we were seconds away from heavy artillery the U.S. Army needed to store there.
The day she let my brother and I out of her sight again was a few days after my sojourn through West Germany alone. This time, though, she let us go to the park by ourselves, being too tired to make the trip with us after the death march we had taken the day before.
Being in the Army, my uncle was required to be physically fit, and a good match for my aunt who managed to get the “good genes” in the family with her slim, athletic build. On the other hand, we had my mother who got smacked with the bad genes – the ones which give a round, curved appearance which when packed over her solid frame implied sturdiness; had she been more athletic, she would have been a force to be reckoned with. Instead she was soft and squishy. All traits she then shared with her children. (Lucky us.)
The Germans, though, loved their outdoor activities. Living nestled between looming mountain ranges, crystal blue skies and large, clear lakes provided year round opportunities for outside activities. Skiing. Biking, Hiking. Mountain-climbing, even. So when my uncle suggested we take a hike – walk is how he probably phrased it, my mother would have never agreed to a hike – we agreed to go along. “When in Rome…” and all that crap.
My uncle, saddled with my newborn cousin on his back like the big old Army packs he was used to, blazed the trail with my brother, who nervously kept a watchful eye for “snow snakes”, those elusive – and imaginary – albino creatures who lived in the mountains of Germany my uncle had warned him about. My aunt, mother and I followed next but it didn’t take long for my mother to lag behind my aunt and me. Smoking a pack a day, being overweight and hoofing it up the side of a mountain doesn’t prepare you for the Olympics of hiking.
We were fine until about halfway up, when we realized the friggin’ mountain grew taller with each step. “Oohh, look at the view of the valley below” grew old after about the fifth or sixth mile (or so it felt). “Think of how beautiful nature is” crap lost its appeal soon after. What remained was five sweaty, hunger, and tired Americans zig-zagging up a dirt path in the middle of a hot, humid August air.
Our feet grew heavier, our breathing got more deliberate the higher we went. Whether it was from being out of shape (my family of three), being a smoker (my mother and aunt), or from the thinning air (my uncle), we gasped for air like fish out of water, and found ourselves stopping more and more frequently to throw ourselves back under water again to stop our freaking lungs from screaming. Somehow, we willed ourselves to the top of that sucker.
Our reward for such heroic efforts? Beer (or more the specifically, Spatten) poured for the adults and dessert for the kids topped with deliciously puffy, whipped cream clouds. Which tasted remarkably like shaving cream. My aunt neglected to tell us another one of Germany’s odd-ball fascinations – unsweetened desserts. Lovely to look at tarts and pies, but tasteless mouths of foam to eat.
So after our adventures in hiking (both up and down a mountain, which down is surprisingly not as easy as expected) and dining al fresco, who could blame her for letting us head to the swings by ourselves. My poor mother could hardly move by that point. Muscles she hadn’t moved in years screamed in agony. Now, it was better for her and my aunt to tend to my baby cousin, the only one I might add who enjoyed our little jaunt on the mountain, riding atop my uncle’s aching shoulders.
We had to play nicely with each other and STAY TOGETHER. Normally, we would have never been caught near each other on the playground at home, that whole boys, and especially brothers, having cooties thing. Amazingly, once isolated from having other children to occupy ourselves with, we got along with each other.
Of course, the reason why there were no other children on the playground could have something to do with the pending thunderstorms rolling in across the sky.
Tucked between two larger mountains when the pockets of cooler air which rolled down their sides, the warmer temperatures found in the valley where my aunt lived made the area a hot bed for wicked weather patterns. Storms rolled in quickly, with great flashes of light filling the sky and deafening clashes of thunder. Having already witnessed Mother Nature’s fury a few nights earlier, I realized hanging around the metal monkey bars any longer signaled a quick trip to hell.
On that night I was certain that lightening bolt had my name on it when I was sent out to the patio to gather the cushions from the furniture. My hair stood on end, and for that brief one second before the night sky’s light switch was turned to the on position, I thought, “uh oh. This can’t be good.” So as soon as my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, I took off – running out of my slippers, throwing cushions to the wind, and high tailed it out of there and into the house, screaming all the while.
So when we realized the sky had turned dark that afternoon on the playground, signaling the next storm on the horizon, my brother and I decided to head for home. Grabbing hands, we took off for home dashing in between the fat rain drops the sky unleashed.
There is something monotonous about how Army bases are laid out. Precise and methodical, each building was identical to the next. Row upon row of rectangular, Lego-like buildings. Dull brown roofs and white, painted stucco fronts housing multiple floors of the same apartment, same layouts, same kitchens and same front doors.
As my brother and I made the mad dash to our aunt’s, we hadn’t realized we had entered the wrong Lego house. Once inside, there was nothing to tell us we had entered the wrong building as we climbed the stairs. So when we knocked on the door and it opened, I walked right in. My brother of course, was more apprehensive. “Car – wait!” he whispered as he tried to pull me back from entering, “I didn’t hear the dogs barking when we knocked. I don’t think we should go in.” He was referring to my aunts’ two dogs who noisily announced each fart or knock on the door. It was silent in the few moments after we knocked. But I was not about to stop for his crazy talk. My aunt could have had them out for a walk. Or my uncle finally made good on his talk of making them into sausage for all that barking.
Walking in, I realized why the door just opened wordlessly. There was a party of some sort going on inside. Lots of adults lingered about, talking amongst themselves, too busy to realize the little girl who wandered about or the little boy hanging on the door, observing the scene. “Sharon?” I asked meekly as unfamiliar faces began to see me and I saw them. After deducing we weren’t in Kansas any longer, I grabbed my brother’s hand and ran past the door. Downstairs, we quickly analyzed our situation and decided to take a stab at another look-a-like building. This time we were met with the happy barks of the dogs when we knocked. Good for us, but bad for the dogs who yapped themselves one step closer to the sausage maker.
Our fascination with all things German and exotic grew weary. We were ready to go home. Packed and loaded, we said our goodbyes and my uncle dropped us off at the Munich airport. Suddenly, our suitcases seemed fatter, filled with booty acquired on our trip. Our carry-on bags were filled with all the items necessary to occupy two children for seven hours in a confined space. As we made our way through the pre-9/11security checkpoints, we breezily put our many bags and what felt like mini-toy chests on the x-ray conveyor belt and walked through the metal detectors. On the other side, we picked up our things and continued to the gate, ignoring the yelling going on behind us.
Airport maneuvering is a learned skill; airport maneuvering with two children alone is heroic. In my mom’s defense, having gathered her little ones AND our belongings without leaving anyone behind was a success. However, being whirled around by armed airport security, brandishing loaded weapons, screaming at us in German quickly killed that moment of triumph.
“Halt! Halt!” which only seemed to get louder as they swarmed around us.
“Vhat eez dees? Vhat eez in he-yere? Open-zee. OPEN!”
They pointed their guns towards to the black-and-pink poodle lunchbox my brother carried. My mother quickly popped the latches to show the menacing guards just what metal contraband we were smuggling aboard the plane. Out spilled hundreds of them – little metal and plastic toys known as Transformers, G.I. Joe soldiers carrying guns of their own, playing cards, crayons. Neatly and strategically, we managed to pack an elephant in a breadbox, the contents of which now lay strewn all over a table, having been questioned for its ability to bring down the airplane at 35,000 feet. My mother was flushed with embarrassment over the scene we seemed to be the center of in the airport. In hushed tones, she yelled at us, “to just grab it all, we can repack it later. Throw it in another bag, let’s just get out of here” but any thoughts of hoping to slink away from this were slim. If you ask me, there’s probably a G.I. Joe man or two that got left behind in the melee.
The rest of our trip, well the last seven or eight hours of it, was relatively unimpressive. What with having landed in one piece and all. Jetlagged, we groggily made our way to our car where my father and grandfather were waiting to pick us up from JFK in New York. The three of us dozed in the car for the rest of the drive home, happy to go to sleep to dream and resume the normalcy of our lives.
* * *
From the front, my brother’s hair looked like a jack o’ lantern’s smile. What remained of his shaggy brown hair lay mashed against the curved, inside window of the airplane as he stared at the patchwork quilt below us. The center part of his bangs had been cut away – “you’ve been scalped,” my mother exclaimed when she first noticed his hair – the result of a haircut he decided to give to himself one day. The same one he gave his precious ALF doll, too. With the hedge clippers. He said he had to do it; the hair kept tickling his face.
As our plane ascended through the clouds, he began to hum to himself when he could no longer make out the tiny city below while attempting to find our street, our house and the people who looked like the ants he liked to stomp on at home. As our altitude climbed, his excitement over heading to see mountains, real mountains in Germany began to bubble outwardly. “Head for… the MOUNTains of … Buschhh… beeeeer…” he hummed softly to himself as he continued to watch the friendly skies. Somewhere a weary marketing exec formed a tear – his jingle had firmly planted itself into the psyche of an unsuspecting person. The fact that it was a 5-year-old wouldn’t matter so much. One day he would be of legal drinking age.
Meanwhile I sat in the aisle seat, gripping the armrests as we tipped back in our seats, ears popping as if underwater. Between us sat our mother, eyes fixed on the lighted sign above our heads, waiting for the “ding” from the ‘no smoking’ sign to tell her she could now light a cigarette from the ones tucked in her handbag beside her.
The year was 1985. The Cold War was hot. People still feared an evil empire lurking behind the Iron Curtain. AIDS was slowly being recognized as more than just a gay disease. “New Coke” failed to revolutionize the soft drink industry.
And people were still smoking on planes, something my little lungs got to experience for the full six- and one-half-hour flight to Germany that summer. Hell, the Berlin Wall was still standing when we arrived on Germany’s soil. It was just my family that was breaking down at the time.
I was 9-years-old and chubby young girl with a long, blond ponytail that swung behind me when My parents were still together the summer we decided to visit my favorite aunt and uncle, the only relatives not living in our soon-to-be ghetto fabulous neighborhood. At the time they lived in a small town in West Germany. Stationed, really, because that is what it is called when the military tells you to move someplace.
But for me, any time spent with my childless aunt and uncle was special. Excluding the disastrous summer spent with them when my aunt vowed she would teach me how to swim. Or die trying. As if teaching a chubby girl straight out of an urban jungle how to swim would not be a traumatic experience. I feared sinking like a lead weight with only flimsy Styrofoam blocks strapped to my round little spandex-clad belly; the YMCA instructors’ feared summer could not end quickly enough.
But on this visit, my aunt and uncle weren’t childless any longer. Another chubby cheeked girl joined our family with the arrival of my cousin, Sarah, who at only a month old was the sole reason for our transatlantic journey. My mom had wanted to visit her younger sister and see her niece. If by doing so, she got a chance to do it overseas, all the more reason to go. “We’ll make a family vacation of it,” she said.
Completely ignoring the fact my father hated to fly.
Let me put it this way: as much standing on the edge of diving board looking down into the water made my blood run cold, flying did the same for him. A gripping, icy fear that refused to shake loose until it decided to take your bowels with it along the way. But my father, rather than throw the tantrum that I did from the edge of the diving board, crying and screaming until one of the instructors agreed to get in the pool to “catch me” while the other instructor pushed me off my perch on the diving board – he merely decided to stay home. He said someone needed to stay home to feed the cat. This is the same cat that would have preferred to have us leave her alone permanently. She would have seen our abandonment as a true sign of her authority over all humans had we left her behind with say, a few full bowls of food and a house of solitude. No, my dad pledged to stay home if only to just remind the cat exactly who was boss.
So at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, I began making memories of my family as a three-member unit, even though it would take nearly four more years before we officially became one.
* * *
When my mother handed me a few crumbled dollar bills to purchase them from a street corner vending machine, it didn’t seem like a big deal. She had sent me numerous times before to the corner pharmacy at home to buy them for her so this routine trip didn’t seem to faze her.
My mother wasn’t a bad mother; she was clueless sometimes.
I took the money and walked out of my aunt’s apartment on the U.S. Army base in Garmisch-Partenkirchen where they were living while stationed in Germany. I walked along the Army base’s circuitous and blindly similar streets. I walked right off the base, past towering chain link fences, topped with barb wire, past stores of olive green tanks and other machinery and past low, mirrored glass buildings hiding secrets only my little mind could imagine.
Wandering along and listening to the sounds of crickets chirping and lawns being mowed I must have become lost in my own thoughts because I never did find that damn cigarette machine. Somehow in my head, the route that my mother described, and same one I saw in my mind’s eye as I nodded along with her directions, failed to materialize.
So I kept walking.
Goddess knows where I walked to that morning. I remember crossing over a large intersection after leaving the confines of the base into the little town where the buildings took on ancient feel with their painted scenes and wooden shutters and flower boxes filled with colorful displays. Eventually, I recognized a little yellow hotel where we boarded a bus for a daytrip earlier in our stay. The crowd of blue-haired ladies waiting to board a bus gave it away.) The hotel, I thought to myself, it had to sell cigarettes. Undaunted, I walked into the hotel lobby to buy that elusive pack of cigarettes that my mother sent me in search of.
Somehow, I failed to remember I was in a foreign country and as smart as I thought I was, I couldn’t speak German. Why the front desk clerked didn’t try to send me back to the institution for mentally handicapped after repeated attempts at communicating my need for cigarettes after realizing the language barrier – hands in my face waving about, making big dramatic puffs on my imaginary cigarette before giving up, and showing him my crumbled dollar bills – I’ll never know. (Why the clerk didn’t try to call German social services for a strange child wandering about by herself I’ll never know, either. Of course, it was 1985.)
After sneaking one last quick look around the dark lobby for a vending machine, I darted back outside into the bright sunlight, defeated and began to backtrack to my aunt’s apartment.
I managed to wind my way back onto U.S. soil before I felt threatened for the first time that day. But the figure running toward me bid me no harm, the sweaty, red-faced body was my mother. Panic-stricken when I didn’t come back right away, her mind began to wrap itself around what she had done. Her young daughter. Alone. In a foreign country. Who doesn’t speak the language. Walking the streets ALONE. BECAUSE SHE TOLD HER TO.
Realizing her chance of winning the mother-of-the-year award was probably shot to hell, she did what she does best – freak out. While my imaginative waters may run deep, my mother’s runs as wide as the Mississippi. I feared my cheeks being pinching by a pack of blue-hairs as I made my way through the parking lot and into the hotel lobby; my mother feared kidnapping. Her blue-eyed, blonde little girl would be scooped up by a childless, East German couple, forced to live the dull gray existence that Communists lived, not the Technicolor world of democracy and the good, ol’ U.S. of A. Or worse, she feared her daughter was smashed by hooligan cars like those we saw on the Autobahn and would be carried off to some German hospital, unable to speak for herself (that language thing again), or even worse still … unable to speak at ALL. Yes! Her daughter would be completely incapacitated and –
By now, my aunt had finally reached her limit. “Go look for her already if you’re that worried. Don’t just sit there,” she told her. My aunt was always the more pragmatic one of the two sisters. (Of course, she was also sleep-deprived and only one month into this whole “mothering thing”, but I’d like to believe it was more of her nature showing through rather than her maternal instinct just hadn’t kicked in yet.) And with that needed swift kick in the pants, my mother set out to find me.
In reality, I have no idea how long I was gone. I don’t remember getting sunburned on the adventure which surely would have been the case had my pale little self had been traveling too long in the mountain sunshine, and it certainly was not weeks or days. But it did eerily foreshadow my teenage years, when after thankfully finding me not dead in a ditch somewhere; she would then threatened to kill me for making her believe I was. By the time, my red-faced mother caught up with me, her panic had reached a crescendo with each ditch she passed that I didn’t lay face first in.
Her panic was palpable as she screeched from fifty yards, “Where were you all this time?” (I would revisit this exact phrase again as a teenager many times.) But hearing it now for the first time because – 1.) I had never ventured this far alone before, and 2.) I had never ventured so far alone in a foreign country – made me take it to heart. She suddenly made me afraid for things I hadn’t realized, all the dangerous possibilities she saw in her mind.
In my innocence, I set out on my simple task to deliver cigarettes to my mother at her request. I never feared for my safety. One long, sweaty hug later, she led me by the arm, quickly dragging me back to my aunt’s apartment before my aunt alerted the authorities of my disappearance. Along the way I listened to her litany of things that could have happened to me.
But somehow for all the crap she put me through (though if asked, she would swear that I put her through much worse), it obviously did not stop her from letting my brother and I play at the playground within a few days of nearly losing me to the East German kidnapping rings. Never mind that this was West Germany, the land where Mercedes were as plentiful as Hondas are today and we were seconds away from heavy artillery the U.S. Army needed to store there.
The day she let my brother and I out of her sight again was a few days after my sojourn through West Germany alone. This time, though, she let us go to the park by ourselves, being too tired to make the trip with us after the death march we had taken the day before.
Being in the Army, my uncle was required to be physically fit, and a good match for my aunt who managed to get the “good genes” in the family with her slim, athletic build. On the other hand, we had my mother who got smacked with the bad genes – the ones which give a round, curved appearance which when packed over her solid frame implied sturdiness; had she been more athletic, she would have been a force to be reckoned with. Instead she was soft and squishy. All traits she then shared with her children. (Lucky us.)
The Germans, though, loved their outdoor activities. Living nestled between looming mountain ranges, crystal blue skies and large, clear lakes provided year round opportunities for outside activities. Skiing. Biking, Hiking. Mountain-climbing, even. So when my uncle suggested we take a hike – walk is how he probably phrased it, my mother would have never agreed to a hike – we agreed to go along. “When in Rome…” and all that crap.
My uncle, saddled with my newborn cousin on his back like the big old Army packs he was used to, blazed the trail with my brother, who nervously kept a watchful eye for “snow snakes”, those elusive – and imaginary – albino creatures who lived in the mountains of Germany my uncle had warned him about. My aunt, mother and I followed next but it didn’t take long for my mother to lag behind my aunt and me. Smoking a pack a day, being overweight and hoofing it up the side of a mountain doesn’t prepare you for the Olympics of hiking.
We were fine until about halfway up, when we realized the friggin’ mountain grew taller with each step. “Oohh, look at the view of the valley below” grew old after about the fifth or sixth mile (or so it felt). “Think of how beautiful nature is” crap lost its appeal soon after. What remained was five sweaty, hunger, and tired Americans zig-zagging up a dirt path in the middle of a hot, humid August air.
Our feet grew heavier, our breathing got more deliberate the higher we went. Whether it was from being out of shape (my family of three), being a smoker (my mother and aunt), or from the thinning air (my uncle), we gasped for air like fish out of water, and found ourselves stopping more and more frequently to throw ourselves back under water again to stop our freaking lungs from screaming. Somehow, we willed ourselves to the top of that sucker.
Our reward for such heroic efforts? Beer (or more the specifically, Spatten) poured for the adults and dessert for the kids topped with deliciously puffy, whipped cream clouds. Which tasted remarkably like shaving cream. My aunt neglected to tell us another one of Germany’s odd-ball fascinations – unsweetened desserts. Lovely to look at tarts and pies, but tasteless mouths of foam to eat.
So after our adventures in hiking (both up and down a mountain, which down is surprisingly not as easy as expected) and dining al fresco, who could blame her for letting us head to the swings by ourselves. My poor mother could hardly move by that point. Muscles she hadn’t moved in years screamed in agony. Now, it was better for her and my aunt to tend to my baby cousin, the only one I might add who enjoyed our little jaunt on the mountain, riding atop my uncle’s aching shoulders.
We had to play nicely with each other and STAY TOGETHER. Normally, we would have never been caught near each other on the playground at home, that whole boys, and especially brothers, having cooties thing. Amazingly, once isolated from having other children to occupy ourselves with, we got along with each other.
Of course, the reason why there were no other children on the playground could have something to do with the pending thunderstorms rolling in across the sky.
Tucked between two larger mountains when the pockets of cooler air which rolled down their sides, the warmer temperatures found in the valley where my aunt lived made the area a hot bed for wicked weather patterns. Storms rolled in quickly, with great flashes of light filling the sky and deafening clashes of thunder. Having already witnessed Mother Nature’s fury a few nights earlier, I realized hanging around the metal monkey bars any longer signaled a quick trip to hell.
On that night I was certain that lightening bolt had my name on it when I was sent out to the patio to gather the cushions from the furniture. My hair stood on end, and for that brief one second before the night sky’s light switch was turned to the on position, I thought, “uh oh. This can’t be good.” So as soon as my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, I took off – running out of my slippers, throwing cushions to the wind, and high tailed it out of there and into the house, screaming all the while.
So when we realized the sky had turned dark that afternoon on the playground, signaling the next storm on the horizon, my brother and I decided to head for home. Grabbing hands, we took off for home dashing in between the fat rain drops the sky unleashed.
There is something monotonous about how Army bases are laid out. Precise and methodical, each building was identical to the next. Row upon row of rectangular, Lego-like buildings. Dull brown roofs and white, painted stucco fronts housing multiple floors of the same apartment, same layouts, same kitchens and same front doors.
As my brother and I made the mad dash to our aunt’s, we hadn’t realized we had entered the wrong Lego house. Once inside, there was nothing to tell us we had entered the wrong building as we climbed the stairs. So when we knocked on the door and it opened, I walked right in. My brother of course, was more apprehensive. “Car – wait!” he whispered as he tried to pull me back from entering, “I didn’t hear the dogs barking when we knocked. I don’t think we should go in.” He was referring to my aunts’ two dogs who noisily announced each fart or knock on the door. It was silent in the few moments after we knocked. But I was not about to stop for his crazy talk. My aunt could have had them out for a walk. Or my uncle finally made good on his talk of making them into sausage for all that barking.
Walking in, I realized why the door just opened wordlessly. There was a party of some sort going on inside. Lots of adults lingered about, talking amongst themselves, too busy to realize the little girl who wandered about or the little boy hanging on the door, observing the scene. “Sharon?” I asked meekly as unfamiliar faces began to see me and I saw them. After deducing we weren’t in Kansas any longer, I grabbed my brother’s hand and ran past the door. Downstairs, we quickly analyzed our situation and decided to take a stab at another look-a-like building. This time we were met with the happy barks of the dogs when we knocked. Good for us, but bad for the dogs who yapped themselves one step closer to the sausage maker.
* * *
Our fascination with all things German and exotic grew weary. We were ready to go home. Packed and loaded, we said our goodbyes and my uncle dropped us off at the Munich airport. Suddenly, our suitcases seemed fatter, filled with booty acquired on our trip. Our carry-on bags were filled with all the items necessary to occupy two children for seven hours in a confined space. As we made our way through the pre-9/11security checkpoints, we breezily put our many bags and what felt like mini-toy chests on the x-ray conveyor belt and walked through the metal detectors. On the other side, we picked up our things and continued to the gate, ignoring the yelling going on behind us.
Airport maneuvering is a learned skill; airport maneuvering with two children alone is heroic. In my mom’s defense, having gathered her little ones AND our belongings without leaving anyone behind was a success. However, being whirled around by armed airport security, brandishing loaded weapons, screaming at us in German quickly killed that moment of triumph.
“Halt! Halt!” which only seemed to get louder as they swarmed around us.
“Vhat eez dees? Vhat eez in he-yere? Open-zee. OPEN!”
They pointed their guns towards to the black-and-pink poodle lunchbox my brother carried. My mother quickly popped the latches to show the menacing guards just what metal contraband we were smuggling aboard the plane. Out spilled hundreds of them – little metal and plastic toys known as Transformers, G.I. Joe soldiers carrying guns of their own, playing cards, crayons. Neatly and strategically, we managed to pack an elephant in a breadbox, the contents of which now lay strewn all over a table, having been questioned for its ability to bring down the airplane at 35,000 feet. My mother was flushed with embarrassment over the scene we seemed to be the center of in the airport. In hushed tones, she yelled at us, “to just grab it all, we can repack it later. Throw it in another bag, let’s just get out of here” but any thoughts of hoping to slink away from this were slim. If you ask me, there’s probably a G.I. Joe man or two that got left behind in the melee.
* * *
The rest of our trip, well the last seven or eight hours of it, was relatively unimpressive. What with having landed in one piece and all. Jetlagged, we groggily made our way to our car where my father and grandfather were waiting to pick us up from JFK in New York. The three of us dozed in the car for the rest of the drive home, happy to go to sleep to dream and resume the normalcy of our lives.
greetings from the sick ward
normally when i get sick, i only manage to take myself out of the game for a few days or weeks. this time, and with this cold, i'm taking hostages.
goddess girl liz laughed when i told her a coworker told me that i infected her with my cold, only i had only spoken to her over the phone since i came down with the plague.
"car, there's no possible way you could have infected her over the phone," she tells me, being all practical, and future-nursing student-like. "maybe you saw her before you were symptomatic or you both ran into whoever made you sick."
"yeah, i guess that's possible. we have been in constant contact since "project rock-and-a-hard-place" began," i offer. "but she managed to get the oozy eye, too. so far, i've been the only person to get that part," i continued, referring to the swollen, bloodshot eye-gunk oozing that made me look and feel particularly attractive last week. like quasimodo with a smoker's cough. only i don't smoke anymore.
liz was a little more receptive to the possibility of my new germ warfare when her throat became increasingly sore after our conversation. "i'm laying in bed and can't sleep because my throat is so red hot and sore, i think, 'i'm gonna kill her if i get sick'," she recounted the next day.
take that telemarketers, you may be next. think i won't?
* * *
the only reason i can attribute to feeling better at all this week has to be because i managed to share the love, err, sickness with others. i thoroughly take stock in the idea that until my germies, like elvis, have left my building can i ever hope to recover.
normally, this plays out like this: i get death-bed sick -- cough, congestion, fever, strep throat, bronchitis, hanta virus. mam, with whom i share everything, maybe gets a slight cough. NOTE: this scenario also plays out in the reverse - mam gets the sniffles, i get pneumonia.
last sunday, when the one-two-punch of fever and sinus headache knocked my ass back in bed, i figured i was in trouble when mam rolled over and told me he wasn't feel any better. "shit," i muttered in between fever chills and chattering teeth, "i'm screwed." if neither one of us was in a position to accept the new germs and we just kept passing them back and forth, then those sumbitches are going to grow fruitful and multiply, and quite possibly kill me as they got stronger.
besides, if both partners are sick, who is going to take care of the other?
as a take-charge, forward adult, it would probably surprise most people that i am a complete puss when i get sick. it's as if i'm a toddler again, throwing irrational tantrums, prone to crying because my head or throat hurts, or bitching because i can't breathe. my legs cease working, too, and i cry out for someone to bring me more juice or more tissues. i throw one mean pity party, i tell ya.
but with mam nosing in on my turf, who was taking care of who? surely, mr. hacking-cough is no match for a 160 degree fever, right? (even in sickness i'm one competitive bitch.) somehow i managed to win our little tete a tete, probably when my core body temperature reached near nuclear levels did he concede my victory and got out of bed to get me juice. hah! he probably feared singed flesh if he stayed under the covers with me any longer.
(this is also precisely why we are NOT fit to be parents, either. my dogs can be trained to bring my slippers, aspirin and i'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to teach them to open the fridge and help themselves to a meal.)
mam was really sick, though -- sick enough to take three sick days in a row -- something that has not happened ever in the 16 years that i've known him. in fact, after last week, he probably now has somewhere in the range of 4 months worth of days still accumulated from his years of good health.
on day three of my plague, when i could no longer stand the razor blades i surely swallowed ripping my throat to shreds anymore, and called the doctor, mam decided to tag along. actually, he rode my coattails to an appointment. with all my medical melodrama, i was coded as a "priority patient" at some point which simply means this chick is so fucked up, you better see her sooner, rather than later or else the medical mystery only gets more complicated. i don't think in the last decade, i had to wait longer than a day to get an appointment. it's like being a rock star and getting into an exclusive club only nowhere near as fun.
"how do you know all these people?" mam barks, as we signed in at the doctor's office, "they all know you by name, for crying out loud."
"i have people, man," i croak, because my throat really balks at the feeling of air rushing over it to form syllables and words, "you don't come to the office weekly for tests without knowing the staff. remember, you got this appointment today because of me."
after some excellent deductive reasoning ("some tenderness in your neck and throat, i see," after i moan and wince as he examines it), the doc concludes we have the average, run-of-the-mill virus, wrecking havoc on our area, and not some form of "hoof and mouth" disease i thought my brother back with him from scotland.
"your throat does look a little red, though, so i'm going to test for strep just in case. we can get the results in about 5 minutes and if you do have it, we'll get you started for treatment," he tells me as i begin to pout at just having an "ordinary" virus. doesn't he know me by now? "ordinary" has never been an adjective used to describe my medical history.
oddity, i'd accept. ordinary, not so much. after gagging me with a tree branch wrapped in cotton to get a culture, mam and i head out to wait the results in the lobby. the very germ-y lobby where i try to never touch anything, except when i'm sick and really trying to share the love, err, germs with others.
but this time, i was so tired and yucky feeling, i couldn't even take pleasure in someone picking up a magazine i touched and getting this plague. so when results came back negative (something very loudly announced to the rest of the waiting room i might add. goddess knows what they others waiting with me thought i didn't have -- the hiv? pregnant?)
on the drive home, mam tried to brighten my spirits on not having strep and coming home with loads of pills to knock this out of my system. "think of it this way, hon, at least you can take advantage of the weight loss benefits not eating solid food affords for a longer period," he tells me, hacking once for good measure because he walked out of there without any drugs either.
oh, i'm sick alright.
goddess girl liz laughed when i told her a coworker told me that i infected her with my cold, only i had only spoken to her over the phone since i came down with the plague.
"car, there's no possible way you could have infected her over the phone," she tells me, being all practical, and future-nursing student-like. "maybe you saw her before you were symptomatic or you both ran into whoever made you sick."
"yeah, i guess that's possible. we have been in constant contact since "project rock-and-a-hard-place" began," i offer. "but she managed to get the oozy eye, too. so far, i've been the only person to get that part," i continued, referring to the swollen, bloodshot eye-gunk oozing that made me look and feel particularly attractive last week. like quasimodo with a smoker's cough. only i don't smoke anymore.
liz was a little more receptive to the possibility of my new germ warfare when her throat became increasingly sore after our conversation. "i'm laying in bed and can't sleep because my throat is so red hot and sore, i think, 'i'm gonna kill her if i get sick'," she recounted the next day.
take that telemarketers, you may be next. think i won't?
* * *
the only reason i can attribute to feeling better at all this week has to be because i managed to share the love, err, sickness with others. i thoroughly take stock in the idea that until my germies, like elvis, have left my building can i ever hope to recover.
normally, this plays out like this: i get death-bed sick -- cough, congestion, fever, strep throat, bronchitis, hanta virus. mam, with whom i share everything, maybe gets a slight cough. NOTE: this scenario also plays out in the reverse - mam gets the sniffles, i get pneumonia.
last sunday, when the one-two-punch of fever and sinus headache knocked my ass back in bed, i figured i was in trouble when mam rolled over and told me he wasn't feel any better. "shit," i muttered in between fever chills and chattering teeth, "i'm screwed." if neither one of us was in a position to accept the new germs and we just kept passing them back and forth, then those sumbitches are going to grow fruitful and multiply, and quite possibly kill me as they got stronger.
besides, if both partners are sick, who is going to take care of the other?
as a take-charge, forward adult, it would probably surprise most people that i am a complete puss when i get sick. it's as if i'm a toddler again, throwing irrational tantrums, prone to crying because my head or throat hurts, or bitching because i can't breathe. my legs cease working, too, and i cry out for someone to bring me more juice or more tissues. i throw one mean pity party, i tell ya.
but with mam nosing in on my turf, who was taking care of who? surely, mr. hacking-cough is no match for a 160 degree fever, right? (even in sickness i'm one competitive bitch.) somehow i managed to win our little tete a tete, probably when my core body temperature reached near nuclear levels did he concede my victory and got out of bed to get me juice. hah! he probably feared singed flesh if he stayed under the covers with me any longer.
(this is also precisely why we are NOT fit to be parents, either. my dogs can be trained to bring my slippers, aspirin and i'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to teach them to open the fridge and help themselves to a meal.)
mam was really sick, though -- sick enough to take three sick days in a row -- something that has not happened ever in the 16 years that i've known him. in fact, after last week, he probably now has somewhere in the range of 4 months worth of days still accumulated from his years of good health.
on day three of my plague, when i could no longer stand the razor blades i surely swallowed ripping my throat to shreds anymore, and called the doctor, mam decided to tag along. actually, he rode my coattails to an appointment. with all my medical melodrama, i was coded as a "priority patient" at some point which simply means this chick is so fucked up, you better see her sooner, rather than later or else the medical mystery only gets more complicated. i don't think in the last decade, i had to wait longer than a day to get an appointment. it's like being a rock star and getting into an exclusive club only nowhere near as fun.
"how do you know all these people?" mam barks, as we signed in at the doctor's office, "they all know you by name, for crying out loud."
"i have people, man," i croak, because my throat really balks at the feeling of air rushing over it to form syllables and words, "you don't come to the office weekly for tests without knowing the staff. remember, you got this appointment today because of me."
after some excellent deductive reasoning ("some tenderness in your neck and throat, i see," after i moan and wince as he examines it), the doc concludes we have the average, run-of-the-mill virus, wrecking havoc on our area, and not some form of "hoof and mouth" disease i thought my brother back with him from scotland.
"your throat does look a little red, though, so i'm going to test for strep just in case. we can get the results in about 5 minutes and if you do have it, we'll get you started for treatment," he tells me as i begin to pout at just having an "ordinary" virus. doesn't he know me by now? "ordinary" has never been an adjective used to describe my medical history.
oddity, i'd accept. ordinary, not so much. after gagging me with a tree branch wrapped in cotton to get a culture, mam and i head out to wait the results in the lobby. the very germ-y lobby where i try to never touch anything, except when i'm sick and really trying to share the love, err, germs with others.
but this time, i was so tired and yucky feeling, i couldn't even take pleasure in someone picking up a magazine i touched and getting this plague. so when results came back negative (something very loudly announced to the rest of the waiting room i might add. goddess knows what they others waiting with me thought i didn't have -- the hiv? pregnant?)
on the drive home, mam tried to brighten my spirits on not having strep and coming home with loads of pills to knock this out of my system. "think of it this way, hon, at least you can take advantage of the weight loss benefits not eating solid food affords for a longer period," he tells me, hacking once for good measure because he walked out of there without any drugs either.
oh, i'm sick alright.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
starting small, very small
i could apologize to any readers i've thoroughly miffed by not posting for the last, oh say, 4 months. but i won't. part of being unabashedly bitchy is never having to say you're sorry. there are simply times when being bitchy is the only way to fly.
(although i will apologize to any readers not in the inner circle who may have been concerned that my absence meant i was in jail for actually holding the pillow over my mother's head during her long, long, looonngg stay at casa michalski over the holidays.)
now, where was i? ahem, yes, being bitchy. my birthright. but even i can keep my forked tongue in my cheek from time to time. take for instance the night at dinner, when after my mother picked up my pepper shaker with hands as slick as professional wrestler's chest, only to watch it shatter into a million little pieces as ceramic shaker met ceramic tile floor. sneezing and choking, we picked up the shards as pepper dust filled our lungs. finally sitting back down to eat, she leans over to ask me if i have any more pepper.
ahem.
or the night she wore a path into my hardwood floors, pacing circles in the loop between my living room, dining room and kitchen in her nightgown as i washed dishes at the sink, waiting to talk with me. i quickly grabbed my glass of wine from dinner, topped it off and headed upstairs to the "no-mom" zone of the second floor where our master suite is.
speaking of, final cork count for the forty two days of her stay? 14, including wine served at the holiday dinner at my house, otherwise i would be averaging a bottle every three days and my liver is just not that far gone. yet.
but i don't apologize for any of those behaviors. i'm bitchy and i'm baaaaaccck. did you miss me?
(although i will apologize to any readers not in the inner circle who may have been concerned that my absence meant i was in jail for actually holding the pillow over my mother's head during her long, long, looonngg stay at casa michalski over the holidays.)
now, where was i? ahem, yes, being bitchy. my birthright. but even i can keep my forked tongue in my cheek from time to time. take for instance the night at dinner, when after my mother picked up my pepper shaker with hands as slick as professional wrestler's chest, only to watch it shatter into a million little pieces as ceramic shaker met ceramic tile floor. sneezing and choking, we picked up the shards as pepper dust filled our lungs. finally sitting back down to eat, she leans over to ask me if i have any more pepper.
ahem.
or the night she wore a path into my hardwood floors, pacing circles in the loop between my living room, dining room and kitchen in her nightgown as i washed dishes at the sink, waiting to talk with me. i quickly grabbed my glass of wine from dinner, topped it off and headed upstairs to the "no-mom" zone of the second floor where our master suite is.
speaking of, final cork count for the forty two days of her stay? 14, including wine served at the holiday dinner at my house, otherwise i would be averaging a bottle every three days and my liver is just not that far gone. yet.
but i don't apologize for any of those behaviors. i'm bitchy and i'm baaaaaccck. did you miss me?
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