Butterfly Flight

 Flitting from flower to flower,

Chasing color in the sunlight,

Smelling the flowers.

I sit on a shoulder, my wings slowly fanning.

A hand runs to capture me, but

I fly away.

Pinching fingers reach for me, 

I flee.

Freely flying for my life.

Another still, soft shoulder.

I relax, moving my wings ever so slowly.

A voice speaks to me in soft tones.

I drift asleep believing

 I found comfort on this shoulder.

I whisper

“I will stay with you. Don’t try to own me.”

The shoulder gently moves

And stands.

I panic and fly away.

Then I hear in the wind,

“I just wanted to walk. . . with you”

The wind blows me further away.. . 

September 1966-September 1968 RIP

 

After our tearful parting

We promised to marry 

And live happily ever after. . . 

Letters for fourteen months of you

filling out job applications 

And, hearing from family,“what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of you 

getting transcripts translated 

And, hearing from friends, “what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of  you

interviewing others about working in USA 

And, hearing from associates, “what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of you

trying to uproot your life to move here 

And, hearing from Kneipverein,“ what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of you

trying so hard to save our relationship 

And, hearing from board members, ”what about Viet Nam?”

One last letter from you about

going to the consulates in Munich and Berlin

And, finding out about Viet Nam.

I didn’t have the strength to write you back

When you said it wasn’t going to work out:

You would be drafted to fight in Viet Nam.

I didn’t have the courage to say

I would rather you be alive and out of reach

Than dead in Viet Nam.

I was too consumed with my own hurt 

To respond with “Thank you for trying so hard.

I’m going to miss you. I love you. Good bye.”

And 57 years later it haunts me.

I never said “Auf Wiedersehen.. . . . “

The Pinning Board

 

Writing helps explore the depths of my thoughts.  

Feelings and memories are flitting around in my head like butterflies.

I chase one down, holding it gently until I can mount it on paper.  

Then, I go after another  and mount it on paper. 

And another. 

And another. 

At last my thoughts are as clear as the summer sky.  

I look at the butterflies of my soul, 

No longer free to fly, but mounted on paper.  

I sadly look at those beautiful memories

Stabbed and still.

no longer flying

photo from Thanksgiving Point

Reinhard

 Before I left home for Germany, Denny McClelland  told us that he’d written his best friend when he’d been the exchange student—-Reinhard.  He’d sent Reinhard my name and address. I’d received a letter very formal and stilted before I left for Germany and I’d replied with my itinerary and where I would stay.  My family and I tried to imagine what he would look like.  We all agreed blond hair and blue eyes, muscular and tall.

I’d been expecting the phone call and was dreading another “set up” that would be TV at his apartment fending off his moves or a drunken night at a disco dance cafe again fending off the moves.  So, I took a deep breath and agreed to a date the following week. I still had my hands full with TV-Peter, Disco Hellmut and Georg who talked down to me like I was his “little woman”.  My “dance card” couldn’t get any fuller and I was not looking for another one to “dance “with..

A week later, in walked a bespectacled tall, dark man with bushy eyebrows, a cleft chin and a friendly smile. We’d already decided to go to a cafe to get acquainted.  I think my mother knew Reinhard would be “trouble” when she read my one page description of our date.

“We went to a cafe and talked for about five hours. . . .We talked about Berlin and divided Germany, Nazism and the last war, communism and Viet Nam, literature, art, music.  Hearing him tell about East Germany and East Berlin (where he was from) is enough to make you realize the threat [of Communism]. Reinhard said that he can’t understand why his parents didn’t realize what was going on in the concentration camps during WWII.”

After that date, we went out to an organ concert in Ottobeuren basilica, went hiking, ball room dancing at a nice ballroom. out for dinner at one of the local inns, played cards with an older couple, a cafe for wine and talk again, and finally on our 8th date. . . . he kissed me.  That was the way to my heart:  hiking, dancing, concerts, wine and talk, playing cards and then after we went walking in the rain window shopping at night, he kissed me.

I soon joined his exercise class called Kneipverein where we also played volleyball and basketball followed by wine and beer at a local pub.  Everyone in the class was older than we were, but I enjoyed the companionship of more mature people.

Kneipverein Group

Well, they might have been more Reinhard’s age since he was 6 years older than I was which means his childhood was during WWII and the harrowing last days of Berlin being bombed.  He went to the university, got his degree in architecture/civil engineering and was working on a large municipal project for an indoor swimming pool in Memmingen.

Several weeks later, we went to our favorite pub for dinner and he confessed he was concerned about our future.  I laughed and said “That’s 8 months off” and thought, “I’ve never had a relationship that lasted more than 3 months”.  He said, “It’s going to get worse not better, “ meaning our parting would be more difficult than if we ended it now.  But we didn’t break up but kept seeing each other several times a week.

We even went on several trips together including several ski trips, a trip to Switzerland and one to his home in Berlin for New Year’s .I stayed at his home and met his widowed mother.  I got along with her pretty well, but there was some friction when she and I shared a room on one of the week long ski trips. I think she was beginning to worry.

Berlin NYE

Reinhard was very kind and gracious even inviting my friends out to dinner when they visited me and served as chauffeur and tour guide for our excursions in Bavaria. A close friend of mine, Carol, visited me about once a month. Our activities usually included Reinhard.  She confessed that she never thought we were that serious about one another.  We certainly didn’t cling to each other in public.  To be honest our size difference made it difficult to walk arm in arm or even to slow dance.  He once said he’d never danced with a Zwerg (dwarf) before.

On an excursion with friends---Boden See

 As the year came to a close, he gave me a ring.  I had to return to St. Louis to finish my degree, and he had another year on his construction project, but he vowed to come to America in July of 1968 after I’d graduated.  We kissed and cried as I got on the train and headed for the long trip home.

Taking Flight

Libby asked me a year ago to tell her about my German boy friend.  All of the “letters” before this were a way of introducing you to my 20 year old me.

Although I dated a lot, I never had a boy friend until Tony Edwards, the English boy that I met when I was 19.  I realized I liked having a boyfriend who wasn’t an American:  someone who was more intelligent than I was, someone who was interesting, someone I could talk with for hours, someone who wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship because I had too much that I wanted to do, that I wanted to learn. 

Following Tony’s example, I applied to be an exchange student in Germany.  Before I was chosen, the other students had been males who had graduated from college.  I was the first female undergraduate. I contacted Dennis McClellan who had been the exchange student before to get information on what to expect.  He was eager to share his experiences and offered to introduce me to his closest friend in Memmingen, Reinhard.

I confidently got on that air plane in St. Louis on August 28, 1966 at 5 PM:  a 20 year old wearing a light weight 3 piece suit, heels, a hat and white gloves with a few small suitcases. (my trunk with most of my clothes had been sent earlier). My first flight was exciting.  I landed in New York City at 8PM, but had to get transportation to JFK Airport for my flight to Europe on Icelandic Air Lines at 1 AM.  I sat alone in a cafe sipping coffee and wondering if this was the cafe Tony had called me from a year ago.

Icelandic was the most inexpensive way so the flight had many students and young people like myself. We had to land in Iceland to refuel before taking off for Luxembourg. We boarded Icelandic but I no sooner closed by eyes than the sun rose and we were over a tree less land.  I thought we were going to crash because without trees, I couldn’t judge our height.  We landed safely in Reykjavik to refuel and were allowed to get off the plane.  Iceland looked no better on the ground than it did in the air.   I went to the hanger that had refreshments (not a real terminal). So, my first foreign country to visit was Iceland.

Landing in Luxembourg, at 8 PM, we boarded a bus that took us to Germany.  That was quite the rollicking bus ride with singing, laughter, jokes which even the bus driver got in on.  One girl shouted to him, “Ich bin heiss”.  He pulled off the road, slammed on the breaks and headed to the back of the bus with an exaggerated lear on his face.  Then, she realized her mistake.  She’d said, “I am hot” which has a more sexual connotation in German.  “Mir ist heiss” is more appropriate for someone who wants the heater turned down.

We arrived in Mannheim at 2 AM and joined several other American passengers for a train  to Munich where we arrived at 7 AM. I was exhausted from sleeplessness and yet I needed to see when a train left for Memmingen and I needed to find my hotel.

Unfortunately I was attracting too much attention. American girl, alone with white gloves and maps…. Men were everywhere offering help (???). I couldn’t understand a word they were saying and I just smiled which encouraged them.  Not wishing to appear unfriendly, I kept nodding and smiling which only made things worse—-one even grabbed my arm and tried to pull me into a building. 

Finally, I found my voice and said, “NEIN” (no).  I could speak only a few phrases fluently:  “Can you tell me where I can wash my hands”, “I don’t know why I’m so sad” and ”a girl without freckles is like the sky without stars.” The first phrase was fairly useful because I could change that last part of the phrase to the hotel I was looking for: “Can you tell me where Hotel Garni is?”  

Once at the hotel, I called my German benefactor who had set up the exchange program, Herr Doktor Maximillian Dietrich.  He was a grandfatherly man who owned the local newspaper. He met me the next day at the train station in Memmingen, introduced me around and filled up my “dance card” with several evenings of activities with some of Memmingen’s bachelors: the head master’s son and two former  exchange students I’d met in Cape when they lived there.  

All Peter wanted to do was go to his parents’ house to watch TV.  All Helmut wanted was to stay out partying until 3AM at the local disco. All Georg wanted was a relationship.  After several weeks of forced joviality and friendliness,  my anxiety level was building. Although I like a good party and I like to watch TV, day after day, week after week was not me. And I wasn't ready for a relationship.

And, then I got a phone call from Dennis’s friend Reinhard… ….

Love, 

Grandma