December 3, 2014 Advent with SusieJ

German

My mother was not German. Her first name might have been Frieda, her last name something that sounded almost ugly when spoken with an American accent, but she was not German, she was American. Her parents were German, literally off the boats in the 1920s, and speaking with accents sixty years later. Don't you call her German, no matter how proud you might be of your own German heritage. This was a very natural reaction to growing up as the daughter of German immigrants during World War II, probably the last gasp of specifically anti-German prejudice. Mom would be the first to say that many other groups still face more prejudice than she ever did.

That's not to say she didn't love and feel at home in German-American culture. She was an extremely active member of her German church, as a leader and a member, even though she had the German women's group change its by-laws to allow meetings to be conducted in English. Italian cuisine might have been her favorite, but that didn't mean she stopped eating Maultaschen, Spaetzle, Springerle, or proper potato salad. When she told me that I would like beer after my six-month stay in Germany — just as she had learned to like beer during a German vacation — I pooh-poohed her, but she was right. German beer was something better.

Those six months were her doing: during one of her annual trips to the family around Stuttgart, her cousin Rudi agreed to look for an internship for me at the IBM offices in Moehringen, and her cousin Ernst said he woud be happy for me to live with his family. The airfare was a present for my twenty-first birthday. I came home with stronger family connections, a taste for beer, fluent German, a southwest German accent, and an outsider's love for a culture I believed to have experienced deeply.

Beyond the Hummels and sauerkraut, I saw how Mom's values came from her German parents' culture: a belief that education and hard work lead to success but also have value in and of themselves, a love of gardening, strong family connections, and the pleasure of sitting around a table eating good food and chatting with good friends.

Celebrating Advent seems a particularly German thing. They invented the Advent calendar, after all. The first calendars may have been paper, and Americans might best know the chocolate calendars, but they are often much more. The very basic are the Advent calendar toy sets offered like "stocking stuffers" in American. The next level are pre-packaged calendars of Lego, Playmobile, Kinder surprise eggs, brandy-filled chocolates, small books, or games. A really dedicated parent makes the calendar, which could be buying and wrapping 24 small presents, or sewing and then filling 24 bags. Me? My first calendar was from my godfather, and each day was a thrill to open, no matter that the doors would stay closed or open after so many years. And now, well, you know what I do now.

Mom and I at the Stuttgart airport. Isn't she the sophisticated world traveler?