Mutti in 1998
Provo,
Utah, 1998
My last three children, now teenagers, my husband, and I picked Mutti, now 78 years young, up from the airport. Her coal black hair was streaked with rusty red, the gray covered up. Her black eyes, now imbedded in wrinkles, were as alert and expressive as ever. She was excited to be in America. And for me, it was time to finally keep the promise I made to myself so long ago, to have her tell me her story. A few days into the visit, I asked her if it would be okay if I interviewed her about her youth.
“There are still some things that are hard to talk about,” she said, “but it’s time to tell the story.
“I’m going to write a book about your life,” I told her.
Mutti laughed. “We’ll see. But even if you don’t, the story needs to be told.”
The next day, armed with three empty 90-minute tapes and a tape recorder, I entered the kitchen where Mother sat at the table drinking coffee.
“Are you ready?”
Mutti put down her coffee and nodded. I showed her how the tape recorder worked and started her talking with a question. “What was your father like?”
And she told me. The story spilled out and I taped for hours, filling all three tapes. I listened, entranced, to a life undermined by the Nazis, the life of a scared young woman in Hitler’s Germany, who wanted nothing but a little happiness in her life. This is a story that should never be forgotten.
As I listened, I started to understand why Mutti had been so distant when I was a child, but as a child, I saw the lack of love in our lives as normal.
Later, I transcribed my mother’s story, and then used it as an outline for a novel. The book is finished, but not yet sold to a publisher. Hopefully, that will happen in the near future, too.
Read the first chapter here: Walk on a Wire.
My last three children, now teenagers, my husband, and I picked Mutti, now 78 years young, up from the airport. Her coal black hair was streaked with rusty red, the gray covered up. Her black eyes, now imbedded in wrinkles, were as alert and expressive as ever. She was excited to be in America. And for me, it was time to finally keep the promise I made to myself so long ago, to have her tell me her story. A few days into the visit, I asked her if it would be okay if I interviewed her about her youth.
“There are still some things that are hard to talk about,” she said, “but it’s time to tell the story.
“I’m going to write a book about your life,” I told her.
Mutti laughed. “We’ll see. But even if you don’t, the story needs to be told.”
The next day, armed with three empty 90-minute tapes and a tape recorder, I entered the kitchen where Mother sat at the table drinking coffee.
“Are you ready?”
Mutti put down her coffee and nodded. I showed her how the tape recorder worked and started her talking with a question. “What was your father like?”
And she told me. The story spilled out and I taped for hours, filling all three tapes. I listened, entranced, to a life undermined by the Nazis, the life of a scared young woman in Hitler’s Germany, who wanted nothing but a little happiness in her life. This is a story that should never be forgotten.
As I listened, I started to understand why Mutti had been so distant when I was a child, but as a child, I saw the lack of love in our lives as normal.
Later, I transcribed my mother’s story, and then used it as an outline for a novel. The book is finished, but not yet sold to a publisher. Hopefully, that will happen in the near future, too.
Read the first chapter here: Walk on a Wire.
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