A Daughter’s Journey

Often in the afternoons my father will open a cabinet, and with his gnarled index finger

trail the spines of binders filled with catalogued DVDs until he finds one he wants to share with

me that day. He’ll slip on magnifying goggles so he can see, headphones so he can hear, and

insert his choice into the DVD player. He plops into his timeworn recliner with an anticipatory

sigh and points the remote to start our adventure. I arrange the pillows on the corner divan to

make a nest and settle in. Papa looks over to make sure I’m delighted. I smile and nod. He

wiggles his bottom into the chair and nods back, satisfied.

We are on a journey of getting to know one another. And we must hurry.

I was born in 1955, the accidental child of a recovering POW and a young woman with

dreams of escaping her limited possibilities. I don’t know if I lived because abortion was still

outlawed in Germany or because my mother’s heart couldn’t reconcile with ending a life. I do

know she refused marriage and banished my father out of my life, legally through the court

system. That is why I met my father the day after my 61st birthday, the year he tuned 90.

We have a lifetime to catch up on.

###

June 21st, 2016. I’m in Germany with my son, Jay, visiting my cousin Michael and his

wife. They live in a charming vineyard-dotted town called Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, located

about an hour and a half from Frankfurt. Michael and I have just dropped my son off at the

airport. He is flying home today but I’m staying for several more weeks to travel and visit other

aunts and cousins. As we leave the airport, my cousin turns to me with a gleam in his eyes.

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 “What do think about surprising your father? I have his address. We can ring his doorbell

and see what happens.”

And with that, the ghost of my childhood is suddenly upon me: a memory of sitting at the

kitchen window of my Oma’s upstairs flat, staring intensely at the sidewalk and willing a man to

walk down it, ring the doorbell and say he is my father here to claim me. The feeling was

overwhelming, as strong as hunger and thirst combined. A need that could not be sated. I would

sit until the feeling passed. Sometimes it seemed like hours. Other times I would run down two

flights of stairs and wedge myself between the root vegetable bins in our dark, dank cellar to

listen to the silence until the noise of it became unbearable. Then I would escape into our garden

to pretend I was a snail and could recede into the safety of my shell. Now I create another image,

where our roles are reversed. Except, I tell myself, he doesn’t want to know me, and the image

has him turning away from me, both of us devastated for different reasons.

I turn to my cousin. He has thought about this, planned it. He knows I can be emotionally

fragile. I tap into his solidity and give myself permission to be brave.

“Okay, let’s do this. I really can’t lose anything; you can’t lose what you never had”

I stare up at the tall apartment building, its black and white façade in need of a good

pressure washing, and wonder which apartment he lives in. Is he even still alive? And if so, is he

frail or sickly? Will I do harm? Glancing down at the mail slots I see his name. Handwritten in

blue ink that is now faded. I turn to Michael, and shift from foot to foot. What are we even doing

here? Both of us are breathing raggedly, our nerves overriding our earlier bravado. The door is

locked.

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 Footsteps echo inside. Michael turns, looking around as if he is going to dash away and

leave me standing alone. A bespectacled older man comes out whistling a tune, keys jangling. He

smiles, still holding the door and I feel a desperate need to grab it and dash up the stairs.

“Kann ich Ihnen helfen?” he asks politely. May I help you?

Michael points to the mail slot and tells him we are family friends from the past here for a

visit. Without preamble, the helpful neighbor reaches past me to push the button. Six, seven,

eight rings; I need to suck in air, but can’t. No one’s home!

Through the scratchy intercom I hear his voice for the first time. A guttural “Ja?”

The neighbor explains that two friends are here for a visit. The voice says, hold on, he’s

coming right down. I’m still clutching the entrance door as an elderly man clops down the stairs.

A welcome smile fades as he swivels on the balls of his feet, peers at Michael and me in turn,

squinting and trying to place us. We all stand there, awkward and silent. The neighbor’s smile

begins to fade, his eyes turn towards me, questioning. He finally heads to his car, glances back

over his left shoulder, brow furrowed now with curiosity or concern.

The elderly man turns to me. Eyes the color of bleached denim search mine. I stand tall,

lift my head, and say the words in German I have been practicing over and over on the way.

“Ich bin deine Tochter.” I am your daughter.

My father sways just a bit, and I see in his eyes, that the millisecond before I said this, he

already knew.

###

My father has chronicled his life in photos and videos. Every year has been celebrated.

Hair color, body weight, eyeglasses, and clothes, all were chronicled as time rolled by. I have

gotten to know his mother, sister, brothers, and their home in Frankfurt which was bombed twice

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during the Allied invasion. No photos of his father; he told me his parents divorced at the end of

the war but did not elaborate. Years of travel around the world are recorded, often in both stills

and movement, then notated with a voice-over. Pages upon pages of detailed written description.

As are events with friends and family.

And our precious time as father and daughter.

During our afternoon coffee at Müllers’ Bakery, I look back to find him with the video

recorder held up to record my pastry selection. Each visit nets me a CD of our time together. He

has also Googled my name and found my website, with all my writings and media. They have

been printed out and sit in a folder with my name written in large block letters across the front.

When he first showed me the folder, I gasped. My father has macular degeneration which is

stealing his eyesight bit by bit. His son has set up dual monitors so that he can take a sentence

and blow it up HUGE enough to read the words, but only with the magnifying goggles that make

him look like a close-up of a bug. The amount of paperwork he has on me must have taken hours

to research and print.

Dear Papa.

Five years have gone by since I rang his doorbell to introduce myself. He did not turn me

away that day. Instead, he invited us upstairs. We sat in his book-lined den and took turns

apologizing for all the years apart. For allowing time and countries, along with an unforgiving

woman, to separate us. My mother had never spoken to me about my real father. She insisted I

accept my American stepfather as the only one I needed to know. After numerous clashes with

her, I reluctantly told myself I would never know my biological father, and settled in to my

American life. But in 2009, my stepfather died from bladder cancer and my mother sent a thick

file of his paperwork to my half-brother to go over. Mixed into the stack were old mimeographed

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papers in German that gave me my father’s name, an address, and the knowledge that he was

forbidden to seek me out; he had signed a document giving up all paternity rights. I was fifty-

four at the time. As I stared at the faded paperwork, I felt the yearning wash over me again, this

need to know the man who had given me half of my DNA.

I contacted Michael and asked if he wanted to try to track him down. Without hesitation

he said of course. After calling everyone in the region with a similar last name with no results, he

finally wrote to the city hall of the town listed in the paperwork. Within a few weeks, he received

a reply that gave him a forwarding address in another nearby town. Michael tracked down a

phone number and called.

Then he called me.

“I’m so sorry. Your father has been ill and his wish is to let the past go; it was a hard time

for him and he doesn’t want to go back into his memories. After your mother took you to

America, he never expected to hear from you again.”.

###

My father continues to create a continuum of his existence. With camera or recorder in

hand, he saves present moments for the future. He says he doesn’t believe in God: because of the

war—especially at the end of the war, when we found what people had done to each other—I

knew there couldn’t be a God. What matters is family. And this I know. Their one son and his

wife live close by with their only son. As Oma and Opa, they are happily involved in their

grandson’s upbringing. Birthdays and holidays are celebrated with various aunts and uncles.

When I commented on his diligence in recording the events in his life, he nodded sagely.

“I figure one day my memory may go. If it does, I can go back and know I existed.”

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 He has also given me the gift of memory. On our first visit, he pulled a thick photo album

out of a cabinet and laid it gently in front of me. Here I was, page after page. Two groups of

photos: at age three and then at five. I found out they were taken during hard-won visits he

negotiated with my grandmother, who raised me while my mother travelled the Middle East in a

dance troupe. In the first group, I’m laughing at the camera and dressed to dazzle, in a plaid

jumper and argyle leggings, holding a porcelain doll with perfect bud lips and a cloud of dark

hair. I’m wearing round pink glasses, and my lace-up booties would be considered a find in any

vintage store today. In the latter group, I have a pixie haircut and show off a scooter with

stainless steel wheels. A huge grin highlights missing front teeth.

I have no memories of these visits.

In his stack of DVDs is one that includes scenes of my childhood, converted from an old

8-millimeter film. It opens with my grandmother, blonde, slim, and looking younger than I

remembered, smiling, and leaning on a stone wall. There is another woman, large and imposing,

laughing. It is my father’s sister who’s there with her daughter, a young teen with a chestnut bob

and confident air.

The scrawny five-year-old in the video is flush with all the attention she’s receiving. She

rides a red scooter with stainless-steel rims around and around a small courtyard. She drops it

and runs over to pick up a hula-hoop, excited and confident as it becomes a whirl around her

skinny waist, then around her stick arms, and finally, around a strong and agile neck, the hoop

huge but obedient. The camera pans out to show her admirers. They clap and laugh at her antics.

I am moved beyond words that he kept it all these years. To have converted the old

grainy depiction of a daughter he could never claim. For me it is proof of a connection we have

always had. My father was not a stranger when he appeared in front of me on that fateful day I

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rang his bell. I knew instantly who he was. As he did me. And somewhere was a connection

from that dusty bin in my mind where I had tucked his memory, to the heart which prompted it to

open. To accept this man as the longed-for father. Beyond the pumping of blood from emotion

and nerves, I felt the ease of already knowing him, of trusting him. But not remembrance. My

mother may have ranted, or quietly and harshly intoned, about my father when I was a child. Not

understanding, but with a sense of their relationship being “bad,” I must have blocked images

relating to those visits.

I’m greedy about my time with him now. I need hours and hours to build memories.

Until the pandemic, I flew for visits twice a year, for weeks, or even a month, at a time. He and

his wife live in a small town filled with parks and Art Nouveau architecture, perfect, as Papa

says “for old folks.” We wore trails in the beautifully groomed parks, tossed food to the ducks at

the nearby pond, and slurped delicious coffee at the numerous kaffeehauses dotted around town.

One afternoon, Papa, his grandson Niklas, and I were having coffee at an outdoor café

called the Hexe Hutte, the Witches Hut. As we watched children splash in the small neighboring

water park, thunder clapped loud and close. Some of the children screamed. A dog asleep

underneath the next table bolted up, spun in circles, and dove under its owners’ feet. Niklas and I

also jumped. My smiling father settled deeper into his chair. Puzzled at his lack of reaction, I

looked at his ears. They were empty; he had left his hearing aids in the small bowl by his front

door. Anni was not home when we left. She’s the one who makes sure he has house keys, his

wallet, hat, and sunglasses. She always tries to get him to take his walking stick, but most times

he refuses. Anni keeps his life, and him, organized. He gratefully accepts this and anytime we

start talking about making plans he tells me to get with her, happy to defer any large or small

decision making.

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 Niklas and I gestured for him to finish his coffee, mimicking lifting the cup and drinking.

Still sighing contentedly, he settled in even more, nodded at us and took a delicate sip. I pointed

to the sky and the wind-tossed tree canopy. He looked up, and with a jolt told us we needed to

hurry, come on, let’s go! Niklas looked at me and rolled his eyes. We were barely underway

when the skies opened in a deluge. What a sight we must have been: an old man, an, ahem,

mature woman, and a burly young man dashing madly through parking lots and gardens. Home

was only five minutes away, but upon arrival we shook ourselves like wet dogs.

My dear Papa. He handed out towels, brought me an ironed, perfectly folded shirt of his.

Next came a pair of his jogging pants, also freshly washed and pressed (goodness, Anni must

iron everything!). Niklas dried off and flounced onto the divan to turn on the television. I debated

with my father about not messing up his perfectly ironed clothes.

When the rain stopped, I hoofed it to my rental flat to change, with plans to return in time

for abendessen, the traditional evening meal of bread and cold cuts. As I opened my door to start

back, I saw a light drizzle had started again. And there in my doorway stood my Papa, holding

up a large black umbrella.

Precious moments, filled with reminders that our time will run out, soon.

END