In Deutschland

Intro: A Lesson in Genealogy

            I think we all have memories that we aren’t sure happened or not, where the line between dream and reality is a bit fuzzed. This isn’t one of those.

            But it’s one I rarely and barely remember, and when I do remember, my instinct is to assume it’s one of the dream-memories, because it seems out of character, being too brash a type of bravery for someone too shy. The time frame is blurry, but during one of my college summers, I felt God tugging me toward nursing homes, asking me to spend time with people. I recall looking nursing homes up at random in phone books, voice shaking when I called to ask for hours, hands jittery while searching MapQuest. Do I really have to? was a lingering thought that I didn’t dare acknowledge and kept stifling. But it felt awkward and inconvenient nonetheless. But why not? proved the louder of the lingering questions, and eventually you just get in your car and drive.

            I showed up to a few nursing homes that summer, asked the ladies at the front desks which patients hadn’t seen visitors in awhile, and sort of meandered into their rooms, alone and, again, awkward. My clearest memory is sitting at the bedside of an old woman, watching golf. We watched golf together, mostly silently, for at least an hour. Let the record show that there is no other circumstance in which I would willingly watch golf on TV. (Unless you paid me. Contact me if this is an option.)

            This was one of those things I wanted to keep quiet, not out of embarrassment, but out of my, perhaps superstitious, theory about Treasures-in-Heaven. Part of me still clings to the possibility that if I do good works, or give to the poor, and someone learns that I’m doing it, it’s not really a good work anymore (see Matt. 6:2-4).

            But somehow, for some reason, my mom found out. Maybe it was the classic So, what’d you do today? and I don’t know how to lie to my parents. But once I told her, she didn't seem impressed. That’s really sweet, hon, but—you’re visiting strangers in nursing homes when your own great grandma is at a nursing home. Why not go see her?

            It hadn’t occurred to me. That “golf-outing” with a stranger was my last. It was my great grandma’s room I visited instead.

            I remember hovering over her shoulder as she sat in her quaint room, in her wheelchair.  She wasn’t exactly talking anymore. Maybe at 103 you’ve said quite a lot already, and the quiet becomes a necessary calm. Maybe at 103 you’re plumb tuckered out. She silently reached for a black and white photograph while I reminded her I was Sue’s daughter, Gene’s granddaughter, in case she forgot. The woman had enough grandchildren and great grandchildren.

            This was the first time I’d ever seen the family photo. Amalia with all her many brothers and sisters, parents and heirlooms, posed and statuesque in black and white. It seems to have been taken in their front yard. It’s a work of art, now packed in one of our household boxes, waiting for the perfect frame so it can hang in our future homes. Soundlessly her finger moved slowly over each family member, and we watched together, the still faces. Her index finger hovered over a healthy-looking girl of about fifteen in a simple dress. Then she pointed to her own chest. Memory is deceiving; I can’t remember if she was crying. But I was. Looking at this young girl in Germany, I was understanding for the first time that my whole life, everything and everyone I loved so much: Grandpa hence Grandma, Mom hence Dad hence my siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins, continuing through the entire Distler line, came from this one teenage girl. And would continue to move forward. She came alone to Buffalo, New York, America, carrying her future bloodline with her, leaving all people and things familiar behind.

            This same old woman who creamed us in Rummy every week, as we sat in her red upholstered booths, child-sized bellies full of spaghetti or spaetzles. She was a young girl once, without all of us. And because of her and her husband Hans—poof. There we all were, this sea of Distlers so necessary to my person. I learned, and felt, genealogy and its mysterious beauty for the first time that day, alone with Grandma in her assisted living room. How brilliant and kind of the Lord to populate and manage the earth in this way—through family, through marriage, through love.

            As my husband admits to me that he doesn’t quite understand it—this seeking after my roots, traveling so far to scan over tombstones, looking for names like Freida and Krug; walking aimlessly down unfamiliar streets so I can think She walked here once; tracing landmarks to find where the family business, her childhood home, used to stand—he still let me do this, and joined me, gladly. He didn’t mind my distracted fascination my first time in New York City, on our honeymoon, when I wanted to go through the papers at Ellis Island to find Amalia Krug, the ship she was on, the names of the passengers before and behind her in line, the distant signature of the customs official who first greeted her.

            And I’m dumbfounded that it isn’t obvious: why wouldn’t you? If you knew where your family came from, why wouldn’t you go to that place, if you could? Why wouldn’t your very first day in Europe be spent in the place you stem from? I can only compare it to so many Christians’ desire, like my own, to see the Holy Land. Sure, it’s not the same anymore—landmarks haven’t been preserved. And yet you can know in Galilee or Nazareth that the path under your feet was once beneath Christ’s feet too. And that closeness, whether to your God or to your family—essentially, to your own soul—is what is so surreal and necessary for me.

            If that girl with the healthy cheeks, standing there resembling my mom’s dad, but decades earlier, hadn’t bravely come alone to America, where she met her German husband, or had she not been born, I wouldn’t be alive. Neither would Don or Christine or Michael or Jenny, etc. etc. And we’re just the family of one of her boys!

            Thanks be to God, maker of Heaven and Earth, who goes before us and behind us, hemming us in.

*     *     *     *

 

            Visiting Germany put another tick on the board Why Peace Corps Was a Great Choice for the Luttrulls. As we chalk the tick, our hands are a bit shaky and hesitant: That wasn’t a dream? We really did that?

            Our first stop, Tauberbischofsheim, was certainly dreamlike. Even the train ride in was full of wonder—this is when I first realized travel abroad should include more than just Africa. Having only seen impoverished lands outside of America (well, I’m not including Canada), it never occurred to me that there could be countries more beautiful than my own. This train ride, complete with castles and no two houses looking the same (come on, America; step up your game, your roofs, your construction), made me jealous of Germans. They are blessed with a gorgeous land that they’ve been great stewards of. As an American I’ve often wished I could have seen America in her early glory. I got teary-eyed both times I watched Pocahontas; imagine Autumn without industrialization, without drab housing developments. But Germany seems a place that has only become more beautiful with age. Building homes on her land hasn’t taken from her beauty, but somehow added to it. This country has no shortage of breathtaking architecture. (Maybe I’m biased; my number one house choice is German tudor style.)

            Tauberbischofsheim gave us a glimpse of smalltown Germany—the German countryside. The highlight of our first day was finding the graves of my great grandma’s parents, sister, and brother-in-law. This was as special as I imagined it would be. That night we sought out the German meals that have lined my family’s table for years: spaetzles, sauerkraut, bratwurst. Even cucumber salad. While the sauerkraut was heavenly (very atypical of sauerkraut), it is confirmed that my mom’s, my grandma’s, my sister’s, my own spaetzles are far better than Germany’s. Even if we do pronounce them “spechlies,” with Cleveland flair.

            The highlight of our second day was every moment. Aside from our wedding day and those of our siblings, I can’t remember thoroughly enjoying an entire day more than this one. Our self-designated “Bed and Bike” hotel—Germans love cycling—offered us complimentary bicycles. After an apple-jelly donut breakfast, a habit that would become a norm for our stay, we began riding. We rode to neighboring villages Hochhausen, Werbach, and Werbachausen. We got a taste of the Tauber Valley, which runs along the long and beautiful Tauber river, through the train windows. But on this day we got a fuller helping, via handlebars and pedals. I’d like to write a letter to the man or woman who designed this bicycle path, running the length of the valley. It wound through backyards and kitchen gardens, along forests where steeples jump out at you, unexpected. I couldn’t help but cry out various times on the bike ride; my adrenaline was higher than on both of my airplane jumps. Everything was perfect and seemed otherworldly, too beautiful to be actual: We were inside an old, black and white film; we were inside a block of dollhouses; we were inside Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; we were inside my own family’s neighborhood. 

            Some of my favorite bicycling scenery were the old German men who rode past us. I’d double-take and stare, thinking I was looking at my own grandfather. Turns out, many aging German men share the same full, ruddy, jolly cheeks as my grandpa and his brother. I kept seeing the “German version of so-and-so,” then considered so-and-so’s family name and thought, Hmmm. Probably German. Staas. Becker.

            Werbach was a quaint ghost-town of sorts, its only stirring being the church bells. We entered a bakery to buy a loaf of fresh bread and block of cheese, to take to the park for lunch. The memory of passing this loaf, too hard to tear, back and forth between us, ripping off chunks with our teeth and glorying in the more-than-one-bread-option is something I’ll keep with me. Give these two a bread stand, and we’ll be happy; if you can guess, we spent little on food those ten days. It was so easy and inexpensive to keep us in the simple joys of culinary heaven.

            Later that day we walked another bike path to another town, Impfingen. And after that, we recovered from our cheese-heavy lunch (wait; it was a bad idea to share an entire block?) in one of Tauberbischofsheim’s parks, enjoying Autumn as Daniel read a mystery novel to me, and I “caught leaves,” a favorite fall pastime I thought I’d have to wait until 2014 for. This surprise of being given Autumn when we thought we were fasting on Autumn-lent, was lovely. I felt I couldn’t complain about the chapped lips—bring ‘em on, and let us see pumpkins.

            Berlin, too, was lovely. Similar to D.C., which I feel is “big-city history,” Chicago but with monuments and chilling stories—every day in Berlin was a history lesson. An interesting one (partly because I married a great story-teller and wealth of information). The Brandenburg Gate; Checkpoint Charlie; what remains of the Berlin Wall (and now has murals); the abandoned airport-now-park-for-parasailing of what was West Germany; Potsdam, important at both the start and end of WWII; the fascinating Pergamon Museum; Sunday service in the Berlin Dom, a gorgeous Protestant cathedral I assumed to be Catholic only because it seemed too majestic, ornate, and beautiful to be otherwise. (The unexpected surprise of partaking in Communion again, before 2014, was similar to the glimpse of Autumn.) Though Dr. Pong, the ping-pong tournament bar we visited, wasn’t exactly historical, I did feel like I was inside a smoky indy German film, and loved it. We watched karaoke on a hill in one of Berlin’s parks. We went to Oktoberfest, ate pretzels, listened to polka, considered what “traditional American dress” would look like if it existed, and simply enjoyed. 

            We spent our last day in the Berlin area in Oranienburg, where we visited Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. This was overwhelming and sobering in its realness. I think we both expected a museum, not a left-as-was expansive reality of location. We stepped through the gate inscribed with Arbeit Macht Frei, Work liberates, and into something like the set of The Great Escape. Tall, barbed stone walls surrounding a fortress of land; watchtowers that seem all too recently used; remains of crematoriums; too many gates, too many places to imagine a starting point, an entryway, of terror.

            The most shaking and terrifying part for me, was seeing it all beneath a gorgeously blue sky with clouds you’d call perfect, beautiful pines and other natural greats standing rooted behind the ugly walls. It was horrifying to see it all in color. I too often forget that history wasn’t in black and white, wasn’t too long ago, wasn’t all that different from what we were seeing, smelling, thinking on that same plot of land seventy years later, two weeks ago. The prisoners, the dead—they saw and felt unsettlingly-divine days like those too: those sorts of clouds, that gorgeous sky, the lovely trees and changing leaves. They still saw evidence of what was normal and good and peaceful, but could have no part in it. If they tried standing close enough to the walls to smell those trees, or watch the sun from a particular angle under the brush, they’d be shot for crossing the line. Hate is an absurd thing, and too difficult to see and know in color. It affected me in a way I didn’t expect: I expected a museum, and what I got was realness, evidence, everydayness.

            Josh was a magnificent host, with a lovely home he and his housemates welcomed us into, and a fantastic know-how for navigating Berlin’s public transportation. We had a great time with him. I think Daniel will cherish their late-night football viewings and recollections of college as some of the best parts of the trip.

            Frankfurt was a pretty place. A serene end to a busy trip, as we saw most of what it had to offer in a short morning and afternoon. The Kaiserdom, where German emperors used to be crowned, was fascinating, pretty, and old—one of the only buildings in its neighborhood to mostly escape the blasts of war. Their statue of Mary had me thinking of the mother of God differently, as she looked like all the photos I’ve seen of my own mother in her late 20s. I guess it’s to Germany I have to go to find my family’s likenesses. Goethe’s house was also neat to see.

            It was healthy and fulfilling and inspiring to be again surrounded by architectural and religious beauty. To see bridges again; statues again; gables again; churches again (we’ve yet to physically enter an Ethiopian church); clean bodies of water again, without thinking of scary medical terms like Schistosomiasis. To be surrounded by a different sort of culture, one more like our own, whose sense of beauty matches our own.

            Growing up, I remember my mom’s measure of a good vacation being that we were ready to return home again. The vacation, the rest, had done its job. Our last night in Frankfurt featured no sort of dreading: we were ready, we were excited, to go back. By day two of our trip, I confess I was hankering for some Ethiopian food. We still had our bags on us when we beelined from the cramped bus (21 people in a 12-passenger) to a restaurant where we could eat special ful, and eat it immediately. I recall last June, being so sad for Ethiopians—They don’t know about tacos or burgers or barbecued ribs or lasagna or pizza or any other creative way to cook chicken outside of their single chicken dish—and today I’m sad for my pre-Ethiopia self, who had to wait 25 years for a decent pot of doro watt. Grilled chicken doesn’t know what it’s missing. I tell you, my idea of comfort food has shifted in the past year, and come late 2014, we’ll be in trouble once we’re not surrounded by it.

            In short, the vacation passed my mother’s test, and was, in every way, perfect. It’s almost tempting to plan every vacation in a single week.