Time and Place

I'm in a discussion with the City of Berlin on their offer of a trip "home" for me and my husband. Born a Berliner - it makes me acceptable. Let's not even go to all the times and places I would not have been acceptable as a Jew.

So, I ruminate on "following the rules", "being on time", "doing as I'm told"...........all the melodies of my childhood, leaking into my past, my present, and probably my future.

It's a family joke that I'm hours early for any appointment. We get to parties before the hostess is out of the shower; my husband drags me back - wait, he says, we'll leave in 15 minutes - or 20 minutes...and my heart starts pounding and my sweat glands start revving up. My blood pressure probably goes up too.....and the longer we wait, the higher it gets.

So I've thought on this before - how my Mother especially was always early, always anxious, always pushing her way forward - (to my great embarrassment, so NOT English )- always
rummaging in her capacious purse for "papieren" - papers. Now I realize it wasn't just paper
it was PAPERS...official documents that meant life or death. In a convalescent home, mentally "gone" for years, she clutched her big purse filled with tissues and became "difficult" if it was out of her hands.

She kept every "official paper" she ever got. I threw out 30 years worth of utility bills when we moved her in with us - and you know, sometimes it worked.!! Sometimes that drift of papers produced something that solved a problem or resolved an issue. And I have something of that in me - great anxiety about dealing with "officaldom" - I always told my husband to deal with banks, insurance companies, taxes - not just because I'm lazy but I'm scared I won't say or do the "right" thing and will get "into trouble".

When I was little, I was my Mom's translator. She was scared to death of officialdom and felt her English wasn't good enough so there I was "translating" for her at 7 or 8. Yet, she didn't "know" I could understand German. What a mental trick that was for her - to know and not to know.

Now I know why so many Jews marched quietly, obediently and trustingly to their deaths. It is a deeply ingrained - at the core of us - to be that way. It's how we are raised, how we are treated and how it betrayed us. My Father was somewhat of a truant, a rebellious kid - on the one hand he believed completely in obedience, following the rules and not talking back - but he, himself,
was not always that way and it saved us.