20 -- The Priest Meets Konrad's Daughter

A heavy-set lady entered, wearing a dress of the latest fashion and a delicate embroidered shawl. Three younger women came after her, one carrying a baby, and then three little boys. Konrad pointed to the older woman. “My wife, Marta Grazynia.”

Marta genuflected and Jozef bowed to her.

“And this is my eldest daughter, Maja Roza.”

Jozef stared at Maja. She was about his age and heavyset, like her mother. But her eyes! They were beautiful, a dark brown, set off with long black lashes. Her dark hair escaped her bonnet in tiny curls. Maja gave him a bright smile and his heart constricted at a memory. He shook the memory off and listened to Konrad.

“My eldest son, Manfred, isn’t here right now, but this is his wife and son, Asia and little Florian.” He turned to the other girl. “My younger daughter, Sylwia, and my other sons, Henrik, Jerzy, and Joachim.”

Introductions made, the family left.

Konrad led Jozef to the little house adjacent to the main building. A young man opened the door. “This is Mariusz, your man servant.” Marius glanced at him and bowed, then led them into the building.

They entered a small foyer from which several rooms led off. Konrad showed him a tiny kitchen. “One of our cook will prepare your meals. Mariusz will introduce you later and you can let them know your preferences.” He opened another door. A bed stood under a window, with a chest of drawers, a closet, and a nightstand near it. An easy chair stood at the foot of the bed.

Another room turned out to be a living room with a sofa and an easy chair, and the last room would be Jozef’s office. Konrad entered, sat down at the desk, and opened the ledger. For the next two hours, he showed Jozef the condition his lands were in and the problems he expected him to solve.

Jozef immersed himself in the project. Finally, this was something that would make a difference in other people’s lives. Not only his master, but also the peasants in town who were working for Konrad would be affected by the decisions Jozef would make. Being here felt right to Jozef.

News About Carnival Girl, the Book

I have received the proof of the memoir, Carnival Girl, and will have them back to the editor next week sometime.

I still haven't got a picture for the title page, nor a link. I guess a link would be pretty early, since the book isn't scheduled to be published till June. I'll keep you informed of any and all news regarding Carnival Girl!

The Scooter 2nd Part

Vati was reaching behind the picture with one hand while holding it in place against the carousel with the other.

In my excitement about maybe getting a new scooter for me and my siblings, I didn’t notice his irritated cussing at the screw. “Vati,” I called, “can we get a scooter for ten carousel tickets?”

Vati didn’t even turn to look at me. “No. Leave me alone. Now I dropped that &*&% screw.”

I stepped closer. If he’d just listen he would understand that this was important.

Before I could open my mouth again, he said, “Get out of here, now.”

I knew that tone of voice. If I’d persist now, he would push me, or worse, hit me, so I trudged back to the girls and Josefa, who was bent, inspecting the younger girl’s scooter.

I walked up to the older girl who looked at me expectantly. “My Vati won’t give me any tickets.”

“I guess I’d be happy with seven tickets, too,” she said.

“I can’t talk to him right now. He’s mad. Could you come back tomorrow?”

Josefa straightened and almost dropped the scooter. “Yes. Tomorrow. We’ll get you the tickets then.”

“And bring the scooter. Maybe if he sees it, he’ll give us the tickets.”

“Sounds good. I’ll bring it later.”

“Please?” Josefa chimed in. She looked at the girl with her bright, brown eyes and made her really cute face.

The big girl smiled at her.

The littler girl reached out her scooter. “Here. You can take a ride.”

I wandered off. Too bad I couldn’t make a cute face like Josefa could.

Mutti called me into the caravan home and gave me the new potato peeler we’d bought a little while before. “Here. Peel me six potatoes. It should go easy with this.”

Listlessly, I hacked at the potatoes, all the while thinking about that scooter. How we could whiz through each new town with that! All the other kids would be so jealous.

Josefa drifted in, and soon Mutti called out the caravan door, “Vati, Franz, essen kommen, come and eat!”

We finished our supper. When Vati was finished, he pushed away his plate and leaned back.

He grinned at me and Carmen and patted Franz on his head. “I got something for you children.”

Franz looked up. “What is it?”

The way I knew Vati, it probably was something that required us to help Mutti in the caravan home. But his next words confused me.

Vati focused on me. “It will keep you out from under your mother’s feet, I hope. Come on out and see.”

I rose and followed after Franz and Josefa.

Outside, leaning against the caravan steps, stood a brown scooter with red handlebars.

“Oh,” Josefa said, for once speechless.

Franz touched the handlebars. “Can I learn how to ride it, too?”

Vati patted his back. “Sure you can. But first, let your sisters try it out.” He turned to me. “Is that what you wanted earlier when you bothered me?”

I nodded. “Thank you so much,” I managed to say.

Carmen added, “We’ll take good care of it. I promise.”

And that was how we got our scooter. When we were traveling, it rode in the pack trailer, where Vati stored the carousel and the other attractions.

Franz soon learned to ride it too, and not long after, raced it down a steep declining street. He couldn’t brake in time and hit the wall at the end of the street. He had to have six stitches in his forehead.

The Scooter

As I watch my grandchildren play in the unseasonably warm weather outside, I remember my own childhood at the carnival. Here's a little story about a toy I and my sisters wanted really badly.

We were running the carnival in another small town in central Hessia. Carmen, Josefa, and I trundled home from school, leather satchels on our backs. One of the girls in my class whizzed by on one of the wooden scooters that were so popular that year. These scooters looked a lot like the metal toy scooters nowadays, except they were bigger and had only one wheel on the front and on the back. As she sped by us, the girl stood on the board between the wheels, braids flying.

“I wish we had a scooter, too,” Josefa said.

I sighed. Mutti and Vati couldn’t afford many toys, and we wouldn’t have any room in our caravan home for it, anyway.

We arrived home, had lunch, and worked on our bit of homework until Mutti said, “Go on out girls. The sun is shining.”

I grabbed my jacket and followed my sisters outside, squinting into the sun. When my eyes got used to the bright light the first thing I saw was the same girl, standing next to her scooter and watching Vati put up the carousel. Next to her stood a much older girl, freckles all over her face, looking just like the girl with the scooter.

Her scooter looked just like that!

I approached them, eyeballing the scooter. “Nice scooter you have,” I ventured. Josefa came up from behind me and nodded.

The younger girl smiled, and the older one stared at us. I got brave. “Can I go for a ride on it?”

The younger girl didn’t let go of the handle. “Don’t you have one?”

Josefa and I shook our heads in unison.

“Maybe we’ll get one soon,” Josefa said.

The younger girl pushed the scooter toward me, but the older girl grabbed her arm, still looking at me. “I could sell you mine. I’m too old for such a silly toy.”

Josefa frowned. “We have no money. Maybe your sister could let us ride hers for a while?”

I glanced at Vati, who was putting up another picture on the outside frame of the merry-go-round. “We could give you some carnival tickets. If that’s okay, I mean.”

The tall girl nodded. “Sounds good. You can have it for ten tickets.”

“Let me ask my Vati,” I said and ran off.

More about the scooter tomorrow!

Baby Shower, Last Part

Friday afternoon, I glanced into the mirror without enthusiasm. Who cared what I looked like, anyway? I was fat and ungainly. I waddled, and the lipstick I had applied underscored the blotches on my skin. I wondered if these women would make fun of me.

Peggy was the first to arrive. She brought a large package, wrapped in blue and green paper with tiny yellow cars and trains printed on it. Mother Towne took the present and put it onto the coffee table. Soon other women arrived, each bringing presents. The gaily colored heap on the table lightened my mood, and Peggy’s friendly, cheerful chatter made me feel wanted and appreciated. I didn’t understand everything she said, but when we started talking about the babies and our pregnancies, I understood most. 

Women surrounded me, several of them my husband’s cousins. They complimented me on my English (which wasn’t so good), on my clothes (which made me look like a butterball), and on my hair (which was stringy).  My dark mood lifted and I returned the friendly smiles of my new cousins and friends.

Mother Towne had come up with simple games. Everybody cut a piece of string to guess how big my belly was. Peggy came the closest and won a small prize, a pair of earrings. For another game, we had to come up with baby-related words for every letter in my name. I couldn’t finish that game, but it didn’t matter. Everybody was laughing and talking.

When the games were over, I sat on a chair in the middle of the room and opened the presents. I received several packages of disposable diapers. Other presents held little boy suits in blue, yellow and green, and booties (a new word I learned,) bibs, bottles, and blankets. The American blankets were lovely, soft and pastel colored.

Mother Towne wrote down everybody’s presents so I could send a thank you note later, and then little sandwiches beckoned with cheeses and meats.

My heart grew lighter. This new place would be my and my child’s home, and it was good to be here.

Later I packed away my new treasures next to the things that had come from Germany. I realized that my life from now on would be just like the baby things in the drawer, a mix of the good things I had brought from Germany, added to the good things I acquired right here, in Colorado.

The Baby Shower, Part 2

After church we drove home along a wide street flanked by low, stretched-out buildings. which looked like I had landed in a Wild West movie set. We were home in no time, and I wondered why we hadn’t walked. True, it was March and snow still crowded the mostly snow-free streets, but it hadn’t been that far. In Germany, no on would drive such a short way. But I wasn’t in Germany anymore, and my baby would be born here. Which reminded me of the baby shower. I’d never hear of parties for people who had babies before. In Germany, after the baby was born, friends would stop by with a present, but not before, and not with a party.

Before I came to Colorado, I didn’t know what life would be like in the United States, and I wanted to be prepared, so I had mailed the baby clothes my sister had given me from her toddler to my future home. Also, I thought having baby clothes from home would make it seem as if I were still there, not in a strange country, cut off from my three sisters and my mother.

My thoughts returned to the baby shower. At my in-laws’ home we exited the car. I turned to Verna. “The people who come will bring presents? Are they for the baby or for the mother?” I asked.

Mother Towne turned into the driveway. She said, “They are for the baby, so you are prepared in case he comes early. And, don’t worry. You will have fun.”

But my sisters wouldn’t be there and my mother couldn’t attend the birth. I wondered if I ever again would have fun.

When I decided to follow Gary to his country, I had been full of enthusiasm. I knew I would be happy in Colorado, and my child would grow up to be an American. But now all of it felt wrong. I was living with strangers in a strange land, and Gary wasn’t there to comfort me. I wished I were home.

Baby Shower, Part One

I stood next to Verna in the foyer of the small LDS church, so different from the old majestic stone churches I was used to in Germany, and smoothed the maternity top over my protruding belly. Three older women came up to us, talking to my new mother-in-law, who introduced me to her friends. While they talked, I wondered what I was doing here, thousands of miles away from my own family, with my husband gone to New Jersey to finish the final months of his stay in the Army.

He wouldn’t be here for the birth of our child. I blinked my suddenly smarting eyes to keep in the tears. A vast homesickness settled over me, for the familiar things I had left behind when I followed my husband to this strange place in the Wild West of the United States.

A young woman, about my age, and also visibly pregnant, stopped us on the way out. Mother Towne introduced her as Peggy.

Peggy shook my hand and said, “I’m looking forward to coming to your baby shower on Friday.”

I was confused. Maybe I had misunderstood? I had immigrated from Germany just three weeks ago, six months pregnant. I didn’t always understand everything in this strange language. Trying to make sense of what Peggy had said, I answered, “Baby shower? Do you mean to wash the baby? Or to show it? The baby isn’t born yet.”

Peggy joined my mother-in-law in laughter. “It’s like a party. Everybody brings a present and we’ll have games and things to eat.”

A party was the last thing on my mind. I pasted a smile onto my face and said, “Thank you.”

Verna searched my face. “It will be fun, you’ll see.”

I nodded, not believing her.

I'll tell you more tomorrow!

Chicken Soup

On my first time in an American grocery store, I browsed the meat section and found just what I needed. And it was so much cheaper than in Germany. I proudly carried home a package of chicken hearts, necks, gizzards, and livers to make a wonderful, warm soup for that night.

Again culture shock set in when I presented my new father-in-law with my home-cooked chicken soup. He appreciated it, I could tell, but his eyes were wide in surprise, and he ate very little. 

The next morning the sun shone onto two inches of fresh snow making the small town look as if it were covered with a clean, white feather blanket.

By the time Gary came home four months later, I had weathered a ‘baby shower,’ an unfamiliar custom during which I received gifts for the new baby and made new friends from the church and the neighborhood.

 

Verna is in the back, and Art is kneeling next to Daniel. Dennis and Marja are standing in front of their grandmother.

I had also gotten to know scores of my husband’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. 

And I had given birth to my firstborn son, not at all by myself, but with the help of my new parents. My new Mom and Dad, maybe as culture shocked as I, nevertheless stood by me, helped and guided me through the pitfalls of cultural assumptions, and until they passed away, were my American parents and my best friends.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the baby shower.

Mesa Verde and Art Towne

On the way back from the hospital, Gary turned right and up a small road. “I’ll show you a bit of Mesa Verde,” he said. “We’ll talk to Dad, and then we’ll go home.”

Mesa Verde looked like something from a science fiction movie. Strange, misshapen bushes lined the road and grew here and there on the mountainous countryside. The snow didn’t quite hide the furry silver leaves of these bushes. When I asked, Gary told me they were sage brush. We drove up a winding road and through a tunnel and finally we arrived at a low one-story building with a large parking lot. Gary showed me a collection of tiny sandstone ruins hiding from the snow under a stone overhang, and looking like oversized doll house remnants, then he took me up a small path to a large, empty parking lot. The information building at the far end of the parking lot looked more like a monstrous box than a building to my culture-shocked eyes. In the empty building I learned about who had inhabited the ruins, but I still couldn’t wrap my thoughts around the fact that people had actually lived there. They were Anasazi Indian ruins. Gary proudly told me that in the summers the whole area would be swarming with tourists, and then his dad would be very busy. 

We drove on to the maintenance buildings. Gary’s dad wasn’t busy and took us to the restaurant. He ordered me a hamburger, which was larger and had a lot more meat than the few hamburgers Gary had introduced me to in Germany, at the A&W close to the army barracks. 

Tomorrow you'll experience church through the eyes of a German girl, newly transplanted to Colorado.

Meeting Verna Towne

Cortez was supposed to be a larger city, but to me it looked like the stage-setting of a Spaghetti Western. Again, the buildings and stores were flat and low, spread out with so much unused space around them that I was glad to be surrounded by the comforting metal of the car.

The hospital wasn’t any different. Low and spread out, we had to walk for what seemed like hours, instead of coming in and taking an elevator to the right section.

We entered a room with white walls. A single bed stood in a corner, and the winter sunlight streamed through a window onto the foot end of the bed. An older woman with fashionably slanted glasses, rhinestones on each side, lay propped up in the bed, watching a TV hanging on the wall. 

She looked up and smiled.

“Mom,” Gary said and rushed into her embrace.

Mrs. Towne smiled at me then turned to Gary. “Is this your new bride?”

Gary introduced us and I held out my hand for the customary German handshake.

“Come closer,” she said, and when I did, she reached out with both arms and hugged me.

I was taken aback by the too sudden familiarity of my new mother-in-law, but at the same time, the instant friendliness of my new American relatives pleased and disarmed me. Verna’s warm smile and soft touch made me like her immediately.

 In Germany, her actions would have been too forward, but I kept telling myself I was in Colorado now, and Americans were supposed to be much friendlier.

“It’s good to meet you, Sonja,” Mrs. Towne said while holding my hand. “Welcome to my family. And thanks for giving me a grandchild.” 

She patted my six-month pregnant belly. In Germany I would have been inspected and talked about for a few days, and maybe eventually gotten close to my new mother-in-law, but, I reminded myself, I’m not in Germany anymore. 

Gary’s mom was doing well. She told me about her operation. I didn’t understand everything, but I did learn that she would stay in the hospital another week, however, to make sure her ulcers were all gone and she was healthy enough to come home.

Culture Shock -- On the Way to Meeting Verna Towne

On my first day in the United States, staying at Grandpa Art and Grandma Verna Towne’s home, I followed my husband outside to see Verna in the hospital. I stepped from the house into a snow-covered, much too large yard. I blinked into the bright January sunshine and stopped short.

“The sun is shining on the snow,” I said. “I need some sunglasses.”

Gary laughed. “We get sunshine a lot. Let’s go to the drugstore first and get you some glasses.”

“The drugstore? Isn’t that the store where you get medicine? Can you buy glasses there too?”

“Yes. It’s not like in Germany. You can buy all kinds of things there.”

He helped me into his father’s car. The older Mr. Towne had already gone to work at Mesa Verde, where he was the maintenance foreman. I assumed he had taken the train or a bus, until Gary said, “Dad took the truck so you won’t have to struggle to get in, with your belly.”

“I suppose there’s no bus or train that could take him to work?”

“There isn’t. I’ll show you where he works on the way back from the hospital. But first let’s go see Mom. The doctor said she could go home in a few days, but she can’t wait to meet you.”

Gary pulled onto the main street of the small town his family lived in.

I stared out the window and forgot to breathe.

The buildings along the road all were low, two stories at the most, and there was so much unused space between them. I felt like we were swimming through emptiness.

 Mancos, Colorado, still looks like this.

  We left town and drove on to Cortez, but it didn’t get any better. Trees and what seemed unused fields lined the road, all covered with the brilliant snow, made even more bright by the relentless sun in a truly blue, cloudless sky. Even the sky looked different here, not the washed out, smoggy blue I was used to. I felt like I had been transported to Mars, or some other, unknown planet. 

Tomorrow, I'll talk about meeting Verna Towne for the first time.

Verna Towne

Verna Towne in 2006. We all love and miss her!

Verna Towne passed away last night, at 91 years of age. Even though we should have been prepared, the family is reeling. Grandma was a great and wonderful influence in all our lives, and for me, she had become a true mother. The next few blog posts will be about her and about me getting to know and love her. Here’s the first one. 

Culture Shock

It was dark when we arrived at my husband’s parents home in Colorado. I was jetlagged and my head kept dropping onto my chest on the ride from the airport. I had only one desire, to find a bed and sleep.

Gary opened the car door and helped me out of the car. A large dog came up to me, alternately barking and wagging its tail. I shrank back. That dog was larger than a German shepherd, with thick, dark fur. He took a sniff at my extended belly, and I expected him to take a bite out of me. But before Gary could even say a word, the dog quit barking and licked my hand.

“Triton smells the baby inside you,” Gary said petting the dog who now had lost interest in me and was smiling a doggie smile at my husband. “He is never friendly to strangers, but somehow he knows you’re part of the family.”

A stranger to me, an older version of Gary, came from the house, hugged me and led me into his home.

Gary showed me a bedroom and finally I could sleep.

The next day, I watched Gary make breakfast. He turned on the faucet over the kitchen sink and let it run. Soon the water coming out steamed. I was surprised. This house had running hot water. In my apartment in Germany, I had to heat the water on the stove when I wanted it hot.

Gary said, “If you’re up to it, let’s go visit Mom in the hospital in Cortez.”

I had slept long and well, and was up to it.

I followed my husband out of the house, and that’s when culture shock really set in. 

*****

Tomorrow I'll post more about culture shock and the first time I met Verna Towne .

Elfriede Markus

Elfriede Edel as a Young Widow

 Mutti’s mother was a widow when Mutti was four years old. She was young and pretty, and wanted to have a man in her life. She went out dancing and having fun while leaving the little girl all alone at home. Eventually she married again, and her name changed from Elfriede Edel to Elfriede Markus.

Elfriede was very young when Mutti was born. She was far from her family and didn’t really know how to raise a child. In many ways, Mutti was emotionally and physically abused. She told me a few years ago that parents of that time hit their children and rarely praised them as a matter of course.

 My wedding in 1973. Elfried and Max are in the front, with my baby brother Michael between them. I'm right behind Max, and my father is next to me with my sister Josefa. Mutti is on the right behind Elfriede, with my husband Gary next to her.

And that’s the reason why I never met my grandmother Elfriede until my wedding at 23. When Mutti was still small, she swore she’d never hit her children. When the war was finally over, Mutti was six months pregnant, so she and Vati got married as soon as they could, with no one of Mutti’s family in attendance.

A year or so later, before traveling to Berlin became very difficult, Mutti and Vati visited Max and Elfriede Markus in Berlin. Then they took their circus back to Hessen, the heartland of Germany. Mutti had no contact with her mother. They never wrote each other. Telephoning was out of the question because of our constant travels. My grandmother must have tried to visit when I was small, but I don’t remember that. When we were older, Mutti told us children that she had no wish to have her mother close to her children, because she was afraid Elfriede would hit us. She didn’t want that, and she didn’t want to deal with her mother.

However, by the time I was 23, they had contacted each other again, and my grandmother was invited, and came, to my wedding. I never met her again after that.

But even though I grew up without grandparents, I hope I have become a pretty good grandmother! I enjoy being a grandmother very much!

Vati's Parents

This is the only picture of grandfather Franz Wawrzyniak and grandmother Wawrzyniak I've ever seen. Can you make out the back of the circus tent behind them?

The little I know about my Polish grandparents came from Mutti. Vati almost never talked about them, and seldom talked about his brothers and sister.

I know that my grandfather’s name was Franz, since my brother was named after him. Franz Wawrzyniak, or Francesco (which was his artist name) owned Circus Francesco, one of the largest circuses in Poland before the war. The family traveled along the Polish-Russian border a lot, and during one of their tours in Russia my father was born. So technically Vati was a Russian, not a Pole.

I learned about that when I got ready to get married to an U.S. soldier. My fiancé, Gary, had a top security clearance. When his superiors discovered that the father of his bride was born in Russia, they advised him to just live with me and marry me after he’d left the service.

For both of us this was out of the question, however, so Gary took a demotion in his clearance and a less sensitive job in the Army, and we got married. Eventually, they returned him to his highly classified job, since he was the best they had for it!

Back to my Polish grandparents. I’m not sure if it’s true, but Mutti told me that Vati had two older brothers who stayed in Russia when the circus returned to Poland before the war. In any case, the Nazi army invaded and conquered Poland. Circus Francesco kept traveling in Poland, but within a very short time the Nazis requisitioned the circus, made a Nazi party member the owner, and forced the Wawrzyniak family to work as hired artists in their own circus. The Nazi owner then gave the circus to a small German circus family as a wedding present, and now the family traveled in Germany. My grandfather died shortly after he was forced to work in his own circus in Germany. Mutti told me it was from grief to see his life’s work stolen away.

This happened before Vati and Mutti met. After the war, the Wawrzyniak family regained their circus, and, before I was born, they returned to their beloved Poland. Mutti refused to go to another country where a totalitarian government ruled, so Vati stayed with her in Germany. His mother must have died around that time, since when I was born she had already passed away.

My father’s two brothers and one sister stayed in Poland. We children met Uncle Henrik only once, and never met Aunt Sonja or Uncle Josef.

The only family I knew of lived in our little caravan home.

Next time, I’ll talk more about Mutti’s parents and why we never met them, either.

More About Mutti

 

 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.

Deciding my Future

 Thank you Alexandrea Zenne, for this beautiful picture of a tightrope walker! That's how I imagined a high wire walker to look when I was in fifth grade!

Germany, 1958 

My paper on Icarus and Daedalus had received an “A” in the fifth grade class I attended that week. In spite of my haphazard education and in my childish enthusiasm, I decided I would be a writer one day. And the first thing I would write about would be Mutti’s life. I ran home, full of excitement.

Mutti stood in the kitchen of our caravan home, stirring soup in a pot and listening to soft music coming from the radio in the living room.

Over the sound of the music I heard my siblings outside, helping Vati put up the merry-go-round. Good. I had Mutti to myself for a few minutes, and she seemed in a good mood. Now was the perfect time to do some research for my future writing career. 

I leaned against the counter opposite the stove. “Why did you join the circus Mutti? And how did you find it? What did you do in the circus?” I half expected her to brush me off, but she didn’t. 

A far-away look settled in her eyes, and she sighed. “That was a long time ago, child. I needed to get out of Berlin, and the circus seemed the perfect solution. It was a way out of all my trouble.” She stopped, turned the propane fire under the pot to low, and pulled a chair from the kitchen table.

I slipped into the converted bus seat Vati had screwed to the floor between the table and the wall. “Did you need to leave Berlin because of Hitler?”

“Yes. The Nazis were everywhere. I was lucky to find the circus.”

“Did you meet Vati there?” 

“Yes.” 

Enveloped by the enticing aroma of oxtail soup, we sat at the kitchen table. Mutti told me about how she met my father. I listened, as quiet as the circus audience when the tightrope walker performs. Mutti rarely talked about her life, but as long as I could remember, I knew she was half-Jewish and hid from Hitler during the war. I watched her, still so beautiful, talk about a past that was surely more bitter than sweet, and knew I would one day write the story of her life. 

And I have!

Tune in for more soon!

About Mutti

At 91, Mutti like to talk about Berlin and how she grew up. She loves talking about the Busch fashion store, where she apprenticed at fourteen, and where she stayed until she was eighteen. It seems those four years were the highlight of her life.

The original owners of Busch’s fashion store were Jews. When the Nazis deported them to a labor camp after Kristallnacht, (the Night of Broken Glass) the new Nazi owner fired her. Mutti loves talking about Busch’s, but she doesn’t talk too much about what happened to her after she had to leave there.

Once, when she was visiting me in Provo, where I live, we sat down, I asked her guiding questions, and she told me what happened. I taped our conversation, and using her unusual life as an outline, wrote a novel about her efforts to stay ahead of the Nazis during this terrifying time.

My memoir, Carnival Girl, will be published in a few months, and I hope Walk on a Wire, the novel based on Mutti’s life, will be next!

I’ll write more about Mutti tomorrow.

Fahrtenschwimmer (Swimming, Part Two)

                                              My Fahrtenschwimmer decal looked a lot like this one

When I was a teenager, Mutti left the Carnival with us girls and little Michael. We stayed in the caravan home in Wetzlar for about one year, then moved into an apartment in a tiny town close to Wetzlar. I rode my bicycle to Wetzlar to work every morning.

I was seventeen by that time, but because I had left school at fourteen, and because of our constant traveling I had never made any friends.

A seventeen-year-old without friends is a rare thing! Something had to take the place of friends, and I did find two things that delighted me to no end. I had converted to the LDS church two years earlier, and in our tiny branch in Wetzlar I made a friend, a girl with whom I’m still in contact today. However, she lived in Giessen, about twelve miles from Wetzlar, and even further away from the tiny town I lived in, so we saw each other only occasionally, and when we took the train to visit each other.

The other thing that I delighted in doing might have found me friends, but because of my background, which taught me to be careful and not make friends because I would just lose them again, and because of a natural shyness of strangers, it never did.

But I did have fun! I went to the indoor pool in Wetzlar every week or so, to swim, teach myself to dive, jump off the board, and in general delight in playing in the water. Most of the kids in the pool were younger and I kept to myself for the above mentioned reasons. I learned to swim on my back and under water, but I never could teach myself the crawl, which is so commonly taught here in the States.

One day, I was playing along the rim of the pool when the life saver on duty, and older man, at least twenty-five, bent down and talked to me. “I see you here a lot. Would you be interested in getting your Fahrtenschwimmer?”

I had heard of Fahrtenschwimmer before, but wasn’t sure if I could do it. “What exactly would I have to do to get it?”

“You have to be able to swim for fifteen minutes without touching the bottom or the sides and dive for ten meters and bring up one of these blocks.” He held up a black rubber block with a handle. “They’re only five pounds. Also, you have to dive off the high board and swim on your back without using your arms.”

“I don’t know.” I frowned at the man. “It sounds hard.”

“It isn’t. I’ve seen you do all of that just for fun. If you pass, you’ll get your certification. You could go on from there, take another test, and even become a lifesaver, if you want.”

That sounded great to me. “How much does it cost?”

“It’s only five Marks. I have regular times when I administer the test. You’ll be certified right afterward. So how about it?”

“Yes. I want to do it.”

“Come with me to my office, and we’ll set you up.”

Two weeks later, on a Saturday when I didn’t have to work, I took my Fahrtenschwimmer test and passed it. I received a little decal and a blue booklet certifying that I passed and could go on from there.

At home, I showed it to Mutti, but she was busy with Michael and just glanced at it. I put it away, intending to take the next test, which included forty-five minutes of swimming and some diving. But things got in the way, and I never went back for it.

However, I still delight in swimming and water play.

Bath Time!

 This room in a bathhouse is a little older, but it's very similar to the ones I used to take baths in when I was a girl.

 Vati moved the caravan to the end of the commons, hooked up the stairs, and we children exploded from our tiny home, exploring our new surroundings. Geese waddled on the grassy meadow, and down a small incline we found a pond.

“Children, come eat,” I heard Mutti call from the direction of our caravan.

My stomach was grumbling. I skirted around a goose and followed my sisters home.

We crowded each other at the kitchen table. Mutti ladled out potatoes and peas and carrots for everyone. Finally she sat down with a sigh. She took a few bites.

Franz pokes Josefa, who squealed.

Mutti said, “Quit making all that noise. And look at you! You children aren’t just noisy, you are filthy.” She turned to Vati. “These children need a bath. We’re close to Giessen, why don’t we all go take a bath tomorrow?”

Vati put down his fork. “I do have some time. Okay, we’ll go first thing in the morning.”

Cool! I remembered the last time I took a bath. That must have been at the beginning of the traveling season. I couldn’t wait. It would be fun.

After breakfast the next morning I had forgotten all about bathing. I swallowed my breakfast roll and drank the rest of my milk in the cup, ready to go outside where the sun was shining.

“Just a minute,” Mutti called after me. “Carmen, Sonja, Josefa, stay here. You girls are old enough to get your own stuff for the bath. I don’t have to do everything for you.”

“What do we need to take?” Josefa asked.

Carmen, as the oldest, knew. “New underwear and socks, dummy,” she said.

Josefa and I took off for the bedroom, where our clothes were stashed in shallow drawers under the bed.

“And don’t forget a new dress,” Mutti called after us.

Carmen showed us how to wrap everything into the dress, and we were ready. Mutti had hers, Vati’s, Franz’s and the baby’s stuff in her large shopping bag.

Vati must have been glad to go to the bathhouse, too, since he wasn’t grumbling and had the car already started.

Franz and we three big girls squeezed into the back of the VW. Mutti stashed the clothes under the hood of the car and sat next to Vati, Eva in her lap.

At the bathhouse, Vati paid for all of us. We children cost 25 pfennig each, and Mutti and Vati cost 50 each, which was half a Deutsche Mark, or half of 25 US cents.

The attendant, and rotund woman with gray hair, handed me and my sisters each a bar of soap and a towel and reminded us not to take too long. I balanced the towel and soap on top of my dress, the same way Carmen and Josefa did.

Vati took Franz’s towel, took Franz by the hand, and they left for the men’s section.

Like little ducklings, we trailed after Mutti. She showed us three adjacent cabins, one for each girl, and told us she’d be in the one next to Josefa with Eva.

Mutti told me and Josefa to watch Eva in the hall while she went into Carmen’s cabin with her and started the bathwater. She did the same for me and Josefa, then disappeared into her cabin with the baby.

I found myself in a tiny cabin, just large enough for a bathtub and a wooden seat on the opposite wall. I could lock the door! That was fun. We had no locking door in the caravan. After I locked and unlocked it a few times I deposited my clothes and the towel on the bench and put the soap into the soap holder by the bathtub. By the time I had my clothes off, the tub was more than half full. I turned off the faucets and sank into the wonderful warm water. How nice it would be to have warm or hot water running out of the walls in the caravan. But that wasn’t possible; even I knew that.

In the tub I drew soap letters onto my arms and legs, splashed with my hands and feet and turned over and over like an otter I had seen in a book once. I felt like singing but knew it was verboten, forbidden. Also, Mutti didn’t like it when any one sang, so I didn’t.

Eventually I remembered to wash my always cropped hair. I dove under the water to rinse off the soap. That was so much fun. When I finally got out. I thought that I still had soap in my hair, so I carefully started the water again, the way Mutti had shown me, first the hot and then a little of the cold until it felt right. I held my head under the faucet and let the water run through my hair and down my neck.

Someone knocked on the door. I turned off the water. “Hurry up,” Carmen said, loudly, but not too loud so as not to bother other bathers. “Mutti is already out.”

I held my head against the door and said, “I’m already done. I just have to dress.” Hopefully, I wouldn’t be the last one to be out.

With the towel, I rubbed my hair and my body dry and slipped into my clean clothes. The old ones I rolled into the old dress and unlocked the door. My sisters and Mutti sat in the waiting room at the end of the hallway. My heart sank. Mutti would be mad that I was the last one out. But then I realized Vati and Franz weren’t there yet. Good. She wouldn’t single me out then.

I ran into the waiting room and plopped onto the bench next to a scrubbed and damp Josefa. From the men’s section, Vati came out, skin red and hair wet. Franz trailed after him, also with wet hair.

That night in our caravan, I went to sleep with the sweet smell of soap and lavender in my nose.

Water

 A typical small town well in Germany. I got water from many wells like that.

Oh, how I hated it when Mutti said, “Sonja, take the canister and get some water!”

She might have run out cooking or mopping the kitchen floor (which was almost impossible to keep clean with seven people coming and going all the time.)

I’d grab the hated canister, an old U.S. army metal contraption Vati had exchanged from an American soldier for some free circus tickets. He got it when I was a baby; before he lost the circus. It had a small opening on the top with a chained-on screw-in lid, and it was heavy even without water. But, living in a caravan, it was an important part of our lives. We had no running water, and at that time, we also had no way to store a large amount of water. So, every day or two, one of us children had to get water.

If we were in a small town, I’d go to the town’s well, located near the center of the town. It had a trough connected to the pump, which was always full of water, ready for the cows and other livestock to come home in the evenings and take a drink before going on to their barns. I’d put the canister onto the grate under the pump, grab the long handle and pump it up and down for the water to come up. Until I was about twelve, I could not carry the canister when it was completely full. It held about ten gallons. I filled it as full as I could carry and dragged it back to the caravan home.

In towns where the well wasn’t close, Vati asked a neighboring farmer if we could get water from his outside tap.

To save water, Mutti made us wash only our hands and faces in the evenings. I don’t think I saw a toothbrush until I was ten.

To get us ready for bed, Mutti filled a bowl half-full with water and put it onto the kitchen table. She grabbed the baby, little Eva, or later, baby Michael, and wiped her face with a rag reserved for the children. Then she soaped her hands and rinsed them in the water.

The next-oldest child was next. We used the same water for the three youngest, and the same face rag for all of us. When it came my turn, I swiped the rag over my face. Sometimes Mutti inspected our work. “You missed your mouth,” she might say, or, “wash your ears, too.” But most often she didn’t even look. The last one, Carmen, poured the used water into the slush bucket by the door and put away the bowl.

One after the other, we tromped into the back compartment, the children’s bedroom, took off our clothes and slipped into the cold bed.

Tomorrow I’ll talk more about water in the caravan.