The woman on TV says to tell each other
How we feel. I just never knew about that.
I guess I wasn’t really asked such things.
The next best thing was watching silently,
Pointing out the behaviors of the others.
How to talk to my mom and dad?
“This is what happened and how it affected me.”
I wish I could tell them. I’d like that.
These days I feel only pure love for them,
Just sweet and sentimental love.
My mom was lovely, but she wasn’t really there much.
I’d be told how to love her and resisted it.
Not sure. We were close and different, too.
She’d annoy me by saying, “I know you better than
you know yourself.” Did she really?
She saw me as awkward, not a womanly beauty like herself.
People would tell me how pretty she was.
I just never knew, why? Why did they tell me?
Why was I so resentful, really?
She bought me pretty clothes at “Muttilein” downtown.
Smuggling nylon stockings she took me along to Yugoslavia.
I was 4 perhaps when she told me to sit
Quietly and wait for her outside, in the car,
Fearing she would never come back,
That I was forgotten in front of that foreign little store,
Until I realized that she’d come back for the car…
She needed the car.
Mom came and went, came and went.
I am forgetting how sweet she sang to me.***
She came to see me in Austria where I was left
with relatives to spend the summer before first grade,
missing my mom terribly until I was sent back home on the train,
told to hold on to my seat for the whole day,
Crossing the border to Germany with my passport, alone,
I did, I was the good girl at 6 years old.
They came to pick me up at Münchener Hauptbahnhof**
Holding my little sister Nina between them.
She had learned to walk. It felt as though
they hadn’t noticed that I was gone.
It was good at home with Oma*, peaceful.
She would cook and bake, sing and tell stories to laugh and cry.
She spoke of losing her mother at 10, leaving behind home and
language as a refugee after 2 world wars, crossing
the Carpathian mountains on a horse carriage in the knee-deep snow
with her teenage daughter and no man for protection.
She would threaten suicide on occasion.
Memories with Vatile - we went to eat Italian
Chocolate ice cream with nut-flakes outside and liquor inside.
We sat together at a shaky little table, just him and I.
Proud and happy moment from a childhood.
Thank you, Vatile, I can almost remember your voice.
You smiled. The ice cream at the Eisdiele "Lido" at the Maxburg,
It was called Tartuffo.
* Vatile - German for daddy; Oma - German for grandma
** Munich main railway station
*** My mom, she sang to me:
Es war einmal ein kleines Buebchen,
das bettelte so wundersueß:
"Mamatschi, schenk mir doch ein Pferdchen ! -
Ein Pferdchen waer' mein Paradies."
Darauf bekam der kleine Mann
ein Schimmel-Paar aus Marzipan.
Die sieht er an. Er weint und spricht:
"Solche Pferde wollt' ich nicht."
"Mamatschi, schenk' mir ein Pferdchen !
Ein Pferdchen waer' mein Paradies.
Mamatschi, solche Pferde wollt' ich nicht."
Die Zeit verging. Der Knabe wuenschte
vom Weihnachtsmann nichts als ein Pferd.
Da kam das Christkindlein geflogen
und schenkte ihm was er begehrt.
Auf einem Tische stehen stolz
vier Pferde aus lackiertem Holz.
Die sieht er an. Er weint und spricht:
"Solche Pferde wollt' ich nicht."
"Mamatschi, schenk' mir ein Pferdchen !
Ein Pferdchen waer' mein Paradies.
Mamatschi, solche Pferde wollt' ich nicht."
Und es vergingen viele Jahre
und aus dem Knaben ward ein Mann.
Dann eines Tages vor dem Tore,
da hielt ein herrliches Gespann.
Vor einer Prunk-Kalesche standen
vier Pferde - reich geschmueckt und schoen.
Die holtem ihm sein liebes Muetterlein.
Da fiel ihm seine Jugend ein.
"Mamatschi, schenk' mir ein Pferdchen !
Ein Pferdchen waer' mein Paradies.
Mamatschi, Trauerpferde wollt' ich nicht."