Weekly Writing Challenge: I Remember

Krista writes for daily prompts on August 5, 2013 at writing challenge – “remember”: “We blog for a million different reasons, but in the end, we’re all storytellers. Creative Writing Challenges are here to help you push your writing boundaries and explore new ideas, subjects, and writing styles. To participate, tag your post with DPchallenge and include a link to this post, to generate a pingback and help others find the challenges.”

Frizz-version, trying to push writing boundaries:
1
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I remember, when I visited my mother on the isle of Ruegen, Baltic Sea, East Germany, she was proud to show me her old stove and garden house. One sunny Sunday morning she put a chicken on my bed to wake me up, another morning the cat. Church bells were ringing there often and the air smelled after cows’ & pigs’ poops. My children loved to visit the horse nearby – but I always had a big fear to open that old chest: Pandora’s box somehow.

2
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When I was born in 1945, my mother, a German armed forces helper on the way from Prague (deep South) up to an island called “Ruegen” (in the very North, Baltic Sea), in the middle of her long journey through a breaking down Germany: she gave birth to me and, after one day in a hospital, she passed me on to a children’s home (in a town called “Wuppertal”, West-Germany) – and left me to my fate.

3
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So I did not learn anything about socialism, communism, STASI (the secret police) or summer camps of young “Pioneers”. In the Western hemisphere I grew up, drinking Pepsi Coke, receiving American Care packages, later on: listened to the Beatles, noticed the students movement in 1968, had no Walter Ulbricht or Erich Honecker, but chancellor Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl.

4
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But I tried to find out the place, where the woman could live, who had born me in that dark year 1945. After 40 years of persistent search, 1985, before the Berlin Wall fell (1989), I found out: She was living behind the “Iron Curtain” on the island “Rügen”.

5
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I took my OPEL car and drove from West-Germany (crossing the “Iron Curtain”-frontier) to communist’s East-Germany, the “GDR”, motivated to take a look at this lost childhood, which I did not enjoy: She (after hugging) showed me her photo album: summer beach near “Kap Arkona” at the north-point of the island, snowy winters on Hiddensee, flight ducks, cranes – but on the other hand coal heaps on washed-out sidewalks. Bad colour films (Orwo), trivial books, Trabi (the typical GDR-automobile) substitute parts: only hard to get.

6
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I wanted to start a new life with a job as teacher there in the GDR – when (in 1990) the Berlin Wall was fallen: A schools inspector on the island Rügen pointed into a corridor, filled with former Stasi employees (security police) and informed me in this manner in an almost dumb “cadre conversation”, he unfortunately (thanks to the “reunification” of East and West-Germany) would have to hide many people in the teaching profession now (the former STASI persons). I should return please to West-Germany, where I just had come from. The direction of my journey seemed to be absolutely atypically, out of character, and not recommendable. No “Ossi” (vs. “Wessi”) – no job.

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As a result my mother, noticing, that all her dreams collapsed, joined an acute epidemic disease at that time: She committed a so-called “balance sheets / summary suicide” by hanging. But she used a wrong technique with a thin rope; she struggled more than half an hour (the doctors said) till she was dead at last…

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I could add many autobiographical fragments, for example related to the second parents who adopted me – but who of my readers would be interested? Maybe only the results are bridges of interest for my blog followers: the results in the term-systems of psychology or philosophy, politics or social sciences, photography or – guitar music … – [I studied Lutheran theology: I learned there, that it is important, to have the courage to resist and protest; I found in the bible also the story about the PRODIGAL SON: yes, I could tell stories, how I found my father as well; but in a first step I only managed to play the PRODIGAL SON BLUES on my guitar; my father was a baker, and when we found us – after 40 years of my intensive criminal search – he was glad, danced with my little daughters like an old Indian tribe chief and then every morning brought bread to my house door…]

background music: me, playing on my guitar the PRODIGAL SON blues:

related:
http://www.amazon.de/review/R14P7THKC12X0B/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1586482661&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=

About Didi van Frits

writer, photographer, guitarist, painter

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