The sleek black Mercedes sedan devoured the autobahn before us, purring like a contented panther in high gear as the countryside flew past our spotless tinted windows.
“Nicht so schnell!” Not so fast. My father’s voice was querulous beside me, a reminder that even if I was driving a car that felt and handled a lot like a jet, I didn’t get to push the limits. At least not when he was in the front passenger seat. The speed of the cars passing us in the left lane like the Blue Angels made him nervous, but there was much else to adjust to. For all of us.
My father, myself, and my two teenaged sons were flying along the autobahn in Germany just a year ago to reunite my dad with the family he had not seen in twenty five years. Or forty, depending on who in the family you talked to. And we were there because my older son, Michael, had met the relatives a few months earlier while he was a foreign exchange student near Hanover, and left an impromptu but large family gathering absolutely stunned that his grandfather had not seen his sisters in decades. I had sat with him at the self-same table—understanding not a word of the animated conversation that rapidly swirled around me in German, smiling and nodding and having another glass or wine or slice of cake. I certainly didn’t leave the house with the same generous imperative. But from the kindness in his heart and the depth of his conviction that “Mom, I have to fix that!” came an odyssey we could never have expected.
Plans were made to take my father and both of the boys to Germany over the Easter school vacation that followed. Cousins and friends overseas were contacted, tickets bought, a car rented, an itinerary roughed out. There was no question that my father deserved the trip. Only months earlier he had remarked that he would love to return to Germany again before he died. And at eighty two, especially, nobody is guaranteed another sunrise.
His had not been an easy life. He grew up in a farming village in western Germany, happy there until the start of World War II when he was pressed into service, first as an aircraft mechanic and then, as the war ground on, as a foot soldier. His only brother, Ewald, died on the Russian front with a bullet in his head. He himself surrendered after three days in a foxhole outside Aachen under a barrage of Allied shelling. He spent three years as a prisoner of war, much of it in a coal mine in France. Marriage to my American mother brought him to the United States, and his life here translated into a series of hard and dirty factory jobs in Chicago and Wisconsin to support his family. He never did really grasp the English language very well.
My first inkling that my father’s health and his mind were not all that they had been came only four days before we left. I had driven the 120 miles to Chicago with my yougner son to get passports issued in person for both of them. Yes, I suppose I could have done this by mail, paid an extra “expedited passport” fee to get them processed quickly. But Hurricane Katrina had wreaked its damage on New Orleans and southern Mississippi not that long before, and my faith in the federal government to accomplish anything in a hurry was at rock bottom right then.
The three of us went down to the passport office in the Kluczynski Federal Building in Chicago’s Loop, and I was shocked by the time we arrived. Both by how frail my father had become—his skin was like paper and his bones seemed as tiny as a bird’s—and how easily confused he was. He possessed not an ounce of stamina, and we cabbed it rather than walk the four blocks to the Art Institute to kill the processing time before the passports would be ready. After a brief lunch, we drove him back home to the city outskirts and then returned to the Loop to pick up the passports later to spare him the strain.
Still, there was no thought of calling off the trip. The boys and I gamely tag-teamed him as we traversed the maze of O’Hare Field, airport security, the wait in the lounge to board the plane, and finally our seats on the big Lufthansa jet for our non-stop flight to Frankfurt. Once belted into his seat and aloft, my father relaxed. Had a couple of beers with the boys and a good meal. Chatted animatedly with the lady in the next seat who appeared to find him fascinating.
Ten hours later we landed in Frankfort in the early morning, retrieved our luggage, picked up the rental car, and began the long drive to my cousin’s house. We stopped for coffee and pastry in some small town along the way, walking ever so slowly down the narrow streets and guiding him like a child away from passing traffic.
Once we arrived at my cousin Ingrid’s lovely hilltop home, the festivities were non-stop. My brother and his daughter had come in from Slovenia to join us for a few days, and the entourage grew larger. We spent the afternoon walking through stalls of flower vendors in the village square and viewed old castle walls in Mayen near Koblenz. We went to late evening Mass on Easter Saturday, drinking hot spiced wine around a bonfire by the church afterward. On Easter Sunday, there was a family reunion at a restaurant in nearby Emmelshausen. As we walked down the street toward the restaurant, my father looking stiffly formal in a navy blazer, an elderly woman and her husband stopped him, dumbfounded. “Is that you, Willie Wagner?” They hailed from his home town, and had not seen him in half a century. He seemed to recognize the woman, and conversed a little with her in German.
After lunch, we drove, in masse, to the village of Doerth where my father had been born and raised. The church had been restored since the war, and we gazed at the stained glass window dedicated to his brother. Through it all he looked exhausted, and I did not leave his elbow unless there was someone else to take my place. There was a feast later, of course, at my aunt’s house. The family instantly grasped that my father’s lucidity was a “sometime” thing, and fussed over him endlessly, an arm draped across his shoulder, a cup of coffee or a glass of wine offered at his elbow. Conversation crackled around him, full of reminiscence and anecdote and affection. Sometimes he stepped right into the talk, a quick stream of German coming from his lips and a spark of connection in his eyes. And then moments would pass as he sat, statue-like, gazing wordlessly into the past. Or nothing.
The days that followed were filled with joy and activity and excitement. We took a boat trip down the Rhine. Had another family dinner afterward. Photo albums were produced, “Willie, do you remember?” Sometimes he spoke, sometimes he nodded, sometimes he just said nothing. There were times he spoke to me in German, and to his sisters in English. We took him to Trier, parking as close as we could to the Romanesque cathedral so his steps would be as few as possible. We drove right past the coliseum, because stopping to look around would have been more than he could take. When we left my aunt’s house after the second big family dinner, there were many emotional goodbyes to be said. He looked at me without recognition, shook my hand, and politely said his farewell. “No Daddy, it’s me, you’re going home with me.”
The last few days in his native country continued to sap his energy and awareness. We stopped in Cologne to see the cathedral because my father had told me in the weeks before we left that he had never been there and would like to visit. But once inside, he shuffled along at a snail’s pace, looking neither left nor right. A one-year-old would have been more responsive, I thought sadly, young and inquisitive eyes drawn instinctively to gleaming brass and brilliant stained glass. I stopped him from time to time and placed my hands on his shoulders, turning him gently to face the incomparable windows. “Look, Daddy, isn’t that beautiful?” He would nod, and then the shuffle would resume. I turned the boys loose for a half hour to climb the cathedral spire, and my father and sat in silence in one of the pews. Tourists and other faithful meandered around us slowly, awestruck, always looking up, their eyes drawn to arches and statuary and filigree and biblical stories captured in radiant glassworks. From what I remember, he looked mostly straight ahead.
By the time we left Frankfort, headed again across the Atlantic, my father was ragged. He had been feted and celebrated, guided and pampered every step of the way. But the uncertainty of his surroundings and the strain of travel had taken its toll. As we searched for our seats on the plane, he could not grasp why we could not take the first seats we saw nearby. Where did all these people come from, he asked. Once seated, he thought he was in church. We commandeered a wheelchair for him upon landing, and his grandsons watched him like a hawk while I retrieved the car from the long-term parking lot apparently set in another zip code.
A year later, my father has returned to what passes for “normal” these days. He lets the dog out, make a cup of tea, helps make dinner, listens to the radio. Sometimes he remembers things like the price of chocolate ten years ago, sometimes he forgets to lock the front door behind him. Despite the photo album and videocassette I made of our trip, I don’t know how much of it he really remembers.
But I like to think…in fact I need to believe…that the fact that he stepped out of a shiny black Mercedes on Easter Sunday to the cobblestoned streets of his birthplace with two strapping grandsons and a smiling daughter in a polka-dot silk dress somehow…mattered.
And still lingers.
“Nicht so schnell!” Not so fast. My father’s voice was querulous beside me, a reminder that even if I was driving a car that felt and handled a lot like a jet, I didn’t get to push the limits. At least not when he was in the front passenger seat. The speed of the cars passing us in the left lane like the Blue Angels made him nervous, but there was much else to adjust to. For all of us.
My father, myself, and my two teenaged sons were flying along the autobahn in Germany just a year ago to reunite my dad with the family he had not seen in twenty five years. Or forty, depending on who in the family you talked to. And we were there because my older son, Michael, had met the relatives a few months earlier while he was a foreign exchange student near Hanover, and left an impromptu but large family gathering absolutely stunned that his grandfather had not seen his sisters in decades. I had sat with him at the self-same table—understanding not a word of the animated conversation that rapidly swirled around me in German, smiling and nodding and having another glass or wine or slice of cake. I certainly didn’t leave the house with the same generous imperative. But from the kindness in his heart and the depth of his conviction that “Mom, I have to fix that!” came an odyssey we could never have expected.
Plans were made to take my father and both of the boys to Germany over the Easter school vacation that followed. Cousins and friends overseas were contacted, tickets bought, a car rented, an itinerary roughed out. There was no question that my father deserved the trip. Only months earlier he had remarked that he would love to return to Germany again before he died. And at eighty two, especially, nobody is guaranteed another sunrise.
His had not been an easy life. He grew up in a farming village in western Germany, happy there until the start of World War II when he was pressed into service, first as an aircraft mechanic and then, as the war ground on, as a foot soldier. His only brother, Ewald, died on the Russian front with a bullet in his head. He himself surrendered after three days in a foxhole outside Aachen under a barrage of Allied shelling. He spent three years as a prisoner of war, much of it in a coal mine in France. Marriage to my American mother brought him to the United States, and his life here translated into a series of hard and dirty factory jobs in Chicago and Wisconsin to support his family. He never did really grasp the English language very well.
My first inkling that my father’s health and his mind were not all that they had been came only four days before we left. I had driven the 120 miles to Chicago with my yougner son to get passports issued in person for both of them. Yes, I suppose I could have done this by mail, paid an extra “expedited passport” fee to get them processed quickly. But Hurricane Katrina had wreaked its damage on New Orleans and southern Mississippi not that long before, and my faith in the federal government to accomplish anything in a hurry was at rock bottom right then.
The three of us went down to the passport office in the Kluczynski Federal Building in Chicago’s Loop, and I was shocked by the time we arrived. Both by how frail my father had become—his skin was like paper and his bones seemed as tiny as a bird’s—and how easily confused he was. He possessed not an ounce of stamina, and we cabbed it rather than walk the four blocks to the Art Institute to kill the processing time before the passports would be ready. After a brief lunch, we drove him back home to the city outskirts and then returned to the Loop to pick up the passports later to spare him the strain.
Still, there was no thought of calling off the trip. The boys and I gamely tag-teamed him as we traversed the maze of O’Hare Field, airport security, the wait in the lounge to board the plane, and finally our seats on the big Lufthansa jet for our non-stop flight to Frankfurt. Once belted into his seat and aloft, my father relaxed. Had a couple of beers with the boys and a good meal. Chatted animatedly with the lady in the next seat who appeared to find him fascinating.
Ten hours later we landed in Frankfort in the early morning, retrieved our luggage, picked up the rental car, and began the long drive to my cousin’s house. We stopped for coffee and pastry in some small town along the way, walking ever so slowly down the narrow streets and guiding him like a child away from passing traffic.
Once we arrived at my cousin Ingrid’s lovely hilltop home, the festivities were non-stop. My brother and his daughter had come in from Slovenia to join us for a few days, and the entourage grew larger. We spent the afternoon walking through stalls of flower vendors in the village square and viewed old castle walls in Mayen near Koblenz. We went to late evening Mass on Easter Saturday, drinking hot spiced wine around a bonfire by the church afterward. On Easter Sunday, there was a family reunion at a restaurant in nearby Emmelshausen. As we walked down the street toward the restaurant, my father looking stiffly formal in a navy blazer, an elderly woman and her husband stopped him, dumbfounded. “Is that you, Willie Wagner?” They hailed from his home town, and had not seen him in half a century. He seemed to recognize the woman, and conversed a little with her in German.
After lunch, we drove, in masse, to the village of Doerth where my father had been born and raised. The church had been restored since the war, and we gazed at the stained glass window dedicated to his brother. Through it all he looked exhausted, and I did not leave his elbow unless there was someone else to take my place. There was a feast later, of course, at my aunt’s house. The family instantly grasped that my father’s lucidity was a “sometime” thing, and fussed over him endlessly, an arm draped across his shoulder, a cup of coffee or a glass of wine offered at his elbow. Conversation crackled around him, full of reminiscence and anecdote and affection. Sometimes he stepped right into the talk, a quick stream of German coming from his lips and a spark of connection in his eyes. And then moments would pass as he sat, statue-like, gazing wordlessly into the past. Or nothing.
The days that followed were filled with joy and activity and excitement. We took a boat trip down the Rhine. Had another family dinner afterward. Photo albums were produced, “Willie, do you remember?” Sometimes he spoke, sometimes he nodded, sometimes he just said nothing. There were times he spoke to me in German, and to his sisters in English. We took him to Trier, parking as close as we could to the Romanesque cathedral so his steps would be as few as possible. We drove right past the coliseum, because stopping to look around would have been more than he could take. When we left my aunt’s house after the second big family dinner, there were many emotional goodbyes to be said. He looked at me without recognition, shook my hand, and politely said his farewell. “No Daddy, it’s me, you’re going home with me.”
The last few days in his native country continued to sap his energy and awareness. We stopped in Cologne to see the cathedral because my father had told me in the weeks before we left that he had never been there and would like to visit. But once inside, he shuffled along at a snail’s pace, looking neither left nor right. A one-year-old would have been more responsive, I thought sadly, young and inquisitive eyes drawn instinctively to gleaming brass and brilliant stained glass. I stopped him from time to time and placed my hands on his shoulders, turning him gently to face the incomparable windows. “Look, Daddy, isn’t that beautiful?” He would nod, and then the shuffle would resume. I turned the boys loose for a half hour to climb the cathedral spire, and my father and sat in silence in one of the pews. Tourists and other faithful meandered around us slowly, awestruck, always looking up, their eyes drawn to arches and statuary and filigree and biblical stories captured in radiant glassworks. From what I remember, he looked mostly straight ahead.
By the time we left Frankfort, headed again across the Atlantic, my father was ragged. He had been feted and celebrated, guided and pampered every step of the way. But the uncertainty of his surroundings and the strain of travel had taken its toll. As we searched for our seats on the plane, he could not grasp why we could not take the first seats we saw nearby. Where did all these people come from, he asked. Once seated, he thought he was in church. We commandeered a wheelchair for him upon landing, and his grandsons watched him like a hawk while I retrieved the car from the long-term parking lot apparently set in another zip code.
A year later, my father has returned to what passes for “normal” these days. He lets the dog out, make a cup of tea, helps make dinner, listens to the radio. Sometimes he remembers things like the price of chocolate ten years ago, sometimes he forgets to lock the front door behind him. Despite the photo album and videocassette I made of our trip, I don’t know how much of it he really remembers.
But I like to think…in fact I need to believe…that the fact that he stepped out of a shiny black Mercedes on Easter Sunday to the cobblestoned streets of his birthplace with two strapping grandsons and a smiling daughter in a polka-dot silk dress somehow…mattered.
And still lingers.
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