Do you remember those thrilling very hot summer days? You were the chubby little 11 year old girl with blond long braids growing behind your ears, thick and strong enough to be used as a weapon for chasing flies and bumble bees. You knew all about weeding vegetable patches, gathering freshly laid eggs, milking the cows, feeding the pigs, picking berries, collecting mushrooms, sweeping the huge front yard and half the width of the main road the length of your farm property on Saturday afternoons, the farmer across the street was in charge of the other half, sitting on top of the hay without falling off when your dad and brother Max were bringing it in from the fields, piled up very high on those oxen pulled carts. My braids were as long as yours but not as thick and strong as yours. Our family had arrived in your small hamlet a few months ago. We had left everything behind in war bombed Berlin and saved our lives by settling in your village. I knew nothing about all the things you knew but I had stories of my own to tell you of things that you knew nothing about. Such as being shaken awake in the middle of the night and being pulled half asleep down into the dark cellar where strange unknown faces had already gathered while frightening noises were heard and the walls were shaking, about living in the dark and in fear, about asking for an apple as gift on my birthday, about people that can communicate in a different language than ours with each other, about the taste of an orange and much more.
You do remember the 'fun-rain' and the oxen pulling the heavy laden hay carts through the village on the paved main road and these large flat pancake-shaped splotches they left behind. The hot tar backed them quickly and when a summer shower started dripping cool rain we could see the steam rise into the air from those cakes. Remember how fast we kicked our sandals off our feet and ran onto the street to hop from one steaming cake into another? Squish and squash and laughter and giggles as this velvety soft and warm-feeling substance soothed our feet. Hurray!!!
No, nobody stopped us. Your parents were busy in the fields and my parents never came around to the farmers. If they did I don't remember it.
2 comments:
Where is Rosa now?
Sabine, Rosa is on her way to one of my next posts.
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