Swimming, Part One

 I only know how to swim breast stroke, and here is why!

I love going to aqua aerobics in the mornings. I enjoy moving in the water, swimming a lap or two and the companionship of the other gym members. But I only swim in breast stroke. Here’s why.

When I was little, in the winters, we attended the same school for about four to five months One day in late November when I attended fifth grade I came home, looking for Mutti. She was in the living room, reading.

“Do I have a swimsuit, Mutti?”

She looked up from her book. “I think you do. Look in your drawer. Why?”

“The teacher said that we will have swimming lessons every Wednesday afternoon, right before we come home. I need to bring a swimsuit.”

“Okay. See what you can find.”

I dropped my satchel onto the kitchen bench and went into the bedroom, pulled out the drawer and dug through mine and Josefa’s underwear. Yes, there was a suit. It was a bright, cheery blue. I pulled it out, and while I was alone, took off my clothes and tried it on. It was a little tight, but still fit. “I found one, Mutti,” I called through the half open door as I put my clothes on again.

On Wednesday the teacher herded us into a school bus and took us to the local indoor pool. “Here are the dressing rooms,” he announced as we walked through the wet and bleachy smelling hallway. He pointed to one side. “This one is for the girls.” Go change into your suits, girls, and wait in the pool area.”

We dressed in the common area, and in no time were in the pool area. The teacher was already there. After all the children were assembled and the teacher had done a headcount (We were about sixteen children) he asked, “Which of you already knows how to swim?”

Three boys and four girls raised their hands. “Okay. You can go to the deep end and play until I’m done with the beginners. Then I’ll teach you some tricks.” He turned to the rest of us. “Line up in the water, please, hands on the rim.”

I followed the children into the pool, hanging on to the rim. The water was surprisingly warm, not as cold as it usually was in the outdoors pools we sometimes played in, in the summers.

Teacher had us line up on the rim of the pool and showed us how to move our legs in the breast stroke pattern. He left us to practice and went to work with the swimmers.

I enjoyed my swimming classes every week and practiced with enthusiasm. But I was a little too wary of the water to let go and let the water carry me. When classes were over in February, I still hadn’t learned how to swim, but I knew the breast stroke movements very well.

That summer I had the opportunity to visit an outdoor pool in one of the towns we held our carnival in. I played around in the shallow end, enjoying the cold water and the feeling of cleanliness it gave me.

“Let’s play together,” a local girl suggested, and we chased each other around in the water. Eventually she caught me and pushed me under. I was scared, but when I came up again she was laughing. “Your turn,” she said, and I dunked her. I pretended I liked to be dunked too, and by the end of our play my fear had gone.

As we ventured into a little deeper water, I pushed off the ground and actually floated. I remembered my breast stroke movements and before I knew it, I was swimming. I had a wonderful time practicing my swimming for two days and then it got cold and started raining, and I couldn’t go back to the pool.

I forgot that girl’s name, but I still remember how I wished I could have stayed her friend and not leave for the next town and the next carnival.

Tomorrow I’ll talk more about swimming

Checking out the New Neighborhood

 A typical, busy street in Wiesbaden, similar to the one Josefa and I checked out.

That first day of winter quarters in Wiesbaden, Josefa and I decided to get out of Mutti's hair and check out our new neighborhood. We went to the hook by the door, grabbed our coats and struggled into them while we barreled down the steps which Vati had already connected to the outside of the front door.

We meandered around the strange caravans. A tall, skinny man talked to Vati, a screwdriver in his hand. A woman stared out a curtained window, listening to them. She smiled without looking at us.

Josefa and I ambled along the fence and meandered down the path our tractor had come. Houses and shops beckoned in the near distance.

“Let’s see if there are any stores,” I suggested. “Maybe we can even find our school.”

“Yes, let’s.” Josefa sped ahead of me.

We turned a corner onto a paved road. A small bakery beckoned with cookies and pastries in the window. We sniffed the sweet smell of baked goods, and admired the wares through the window. A display of my favorite, a pastry called Amerikaner, the American, made my mouth water. The baker had placed the pastries, cone shaped and with white frosting on the top, in a pyramid of five on a plate. I imagined eating one, while Josefa pointed to the round doughnuts, called Berliner, covered in coarse sugar.

 We told each other how good they would taste, and went on. Soon a small intersection distracted us from our stomachs. We marched through it, to see what kind of other stores we could find.

The next road was asphalted instead of cobble-stoned, and cars sped by. Stores with large show windows lined it. Women with shopping nets bustled along the sidewalk, men with briefcases, bundled into warm coats, hurried around us. We looked, but didn’t see a school. The sun disappeared behind the buildings, and I shivered in my thin coat.

More to reassure myself instead of Josefa, I said, “Let’s go home.”

A Visit to Poland

 

I was eleven that year. One evening in November, after we settled down in winter quarters, I overheard Mutti and Vati talking.

Josefa and I were sitting at the kitchen table, finishing some homework, when Vati’s deep voice resonated through the small caravan home. “My sister would be delighted to have her namesake come and visit her.”

Josefa looked up from her math book and frowned at me. “What do they mean?” she mouthed.

I shrugged, but a knot formed in my stomach. Did my parents want to send me away? Maybe forever? I didn’t know how to live anywhere else but here in my family. Maybe Vati would go with me. Then it wouldn’t be so scary.

The next morning Mutti handed me my sandwich for lunch break. “Come right home from school today. We have to get your visa pictures made.”

I took the sandwich bag and stuffed it into my satchel. “Are you really going to send me to Poland?”

“It will be a great opportunity for you.” She opened the door. “Now go on or you’ll be late for school.”

“Will Vati or you go with me?”

“Don’t worry about that. Off with you to school.” She pointed to the outside.

I decided now wasn’t the time to discuss this and left. But the thoughts whirled around in my head. The way Mutti had answered my question indicated that I would go alone. I didn’t want to go to Poland alone. I didn’t know anybody in Poland. Why couldn’t I stay here, in our caravan, with my brothers and sisters? But if I’d say anything Mutti wouldn’t listen to me. She’d just tell me to shut up.

That day, in school, I tried to imagine what Poland would be like. All I could think of was a cold, rainy and dark place with lots of cobblestones and no trees.

I made myself hurry home, even though I would rather have dawdled. Mutti was waiting with her coat on and purse in her hand. “There you are. Let’s go.”

I dropped my satchel onto the kitchen bench and hurried after her, wondering what it would be like to have a picture taken.

The photographer took me to a small, dark room. He had me sit on a hard stool and told me not to smile. A flash made me squint, and then it was all over.

The photographer escorted us out. “I’ll have the photos ready in two weeks. It’s been a pleasure.”

Nothing much happened the next few days. Vati and Mutti didn’t talk about Poland anymore. I was relieved. Maybe they had forgotten.

One day, when I came home, Mutti said. “The photos for your visa are here.” She showed me a set of four black and white pictures. They showed my face and my too short cropped hair. I thought I looked ugly. Maybe Aunt Sonja wouldn’t like me when I arrived in Poland and would send me back again.

Vati sat on the living room sofa, writing in some papers. “My sister will be so glad to have a young person around,” he said. “I’ll mail the papers as soon as I’m done here. Then all we have to do is wait.”

I hoped getting the visa would take a really long time. Maybe it would take the rest of the winter, and by spring we’d be traveling again. Those papers might never reach us, and I’d stay home.

One day in February I came home and heard my parent arguing before I opened the door to the caravan home. I stopped on the steps and listened.

“I tell you, if we send her, we’ll never see her again,” Mutti’s strident voice came through the door.

Vati’s voice, quieter and lower, answered, “I promised my sister we’d send her. She’ll make sure our child will come back.”

“What can she do when the government refuses to let Sonja return? A month ago I wouldn’t have worried, but now…” Mutti’s words trailed off.

“Maybe you’re right. We could wait and see what happens. If the laws lighten up again, we can always send her later.”

“That’s an idea. I’m sure your sister will understand.” Mutti sounded relieved. “Maybe we’ll send her next winter.”

My heart grew lighter. At least for now I was safe. I decided that now was the moment to interrupt and charged into the caravan home.

My parents never said another word to me about it, and they never sent me to Poland.

Learning

One sunny spring morning when I was five, I woke and wandered from the bedroom compartment in the very back of the caravan home through the living room into the kitchen on the other end, ready for breakfast, when Mutti announced, “You’re going to school today.”

She made me take off yesterday’s dress, and pulled a clean, but rumpled one over my head, attacked my short brown hair with a brush and put a bobby pin into my bangs.

School? How nice! I thought while eating a fresh bun Mutti had bought at the baker’s earlier that morning. Going to school meant I’d be big, like my sister Carmen.

Carmen and I hurried after Mutti across the town commons, to the elementary school of the town we were holding our carnival in that week.

In the school hallway, she asked where the third and first grade classes were. They were both in the same classroom. She marched us into the room and gave the teacher the two little booklets that would record our school attendance for the weeks we were traveling.

Mutti left. The teacher stared at us. He asked Carmen for her name and what grade she was in, and asked one of the little boys to move over to make room for her.

He turned to me. “You look a little small,” he said. “I’m almost six,” I answered.

“Have you gone to school before?”

I shook my head.

"Well, it doesn't matter." He led me to an empty seat on the other side of the room.

He drew some numbers and signs onto the left side of the big board in front of the room and told the older children to copy them and solve the problems. 

One my side of the room, he had the smaller children take out their slate boards and the styluses that went with it. 

He made a squiggly mark onto the other side of the board. "That's called an S. You first graders will practice your S's on your slate board today."

           When he noticed I didn’t have one, he gave me a slate board and said I could keep it. I focused 

hard and did a pretty good job writing S’s onto the slate board. Later the teacher handed out papers and

pencils and had us trace the S’s onto lined paper. I made three rows full.

At the end of class I could hardly wait to get home and show Mutti what I had learned. I know how to draw S’s, and how to pronounce them. The teacher had told me that my name began with just that letter, the S.

I ran home over the commons. “Mutti, Mutti, I know how to make an “S,” I said. “Look here, I made three rows full.”

My baby brother Franz yelled and chased little Josefa, who was too small to go to school. She was crying and saying, “He’s pulling my hair. Make him stop.”

Mutti, with a spoon in her hand, grabbed Franz as he ran by and shook him.

She turned to me. “Shut up and get ready for lunch,” she said, not even noticing the paper in my hand.