Es ist Schwer
Christmas is 13 days away, and I wish it were 1,300 days away, but I got a Christmas present today and it's the best present I've ever received from anyone in my family. It's my Opa's lighter.
This is my grandfather, my Opa, Nathanael Werner.
A few weeks ago my cousin Cinderella, who lives in California, sent me an email:
Yes, oh yes, I want it.
I tried to find it after Opa died. I was just a kid; a teenager; it's not that I wanted to use it. To me, that lighter was a symbol of my grandfather. It was small; I wanted to carry it around in the back pocket of my Levi's, and pull it out from time to time when I needed to show someone how cool I was. I asked Oma what happened to Opa's lighter, but she didn't know. No one seemed to know.
To this day, I am instantly attracted to a man who lights my cigarette with a Zippo. I love the sound of it, the rasping, then the snapping shut. The smell of the butane. I judge a man's character by the skill with which he handles his Zippo. You know how, in a crowded room, when someone speaks your name you hear it across the din? I hear Zippos that way.
When Jack and I used to talk on the phone until 5:00 am, I could hear him periodically snapping the heavy chrome lid of his Zippo shut. It's not what made me fall in love with him, it's what makes me miss him, just like I miss my Opa.
Opa's birthday was August 16. The day he turned 63 was the day Elvis died. Perhaps that explains the emotional chord Graceland struck in me.
That was 1977. My parents and I had just returned from a two month sojourn to Germany, where I had bought this record by Peggy March called Es ist Schwer; the chorus of the title song goes, "Es ist schwer, dich zu vergessen. I can still sing the chorus. It's been running through my head since I started writing this story. I think I may still have the record. It means "It is hard to forget you."
Anyone who ever met my Opa would tell you, he's hard to forget.
Today we had a pre-Christmas family gathering at my aunt and uncle's house in the homeland. Cinderella and her husband, Prince Charming, were there, and because that's a rare occasion, our cousin Kristine made the trek from Kingston to add to the regular registry of relatives. Markus's wife Amy, who's new to the family, wasn't there, which was too bad; I like her a lot. A couple of weeks ago she had been on the phone with her sister in North Dakota, excitedly discussing her nephew's upcoming first birthday this weekend. Markus overheard Amy instructing her sister to "Videotape everything so that Markus and I can watch it!" Markus went directly to his computer, logged on, and bought her a plane ticket.
My Opa had three daughters: my mother was the eldest, Cinder's and Markus's the youngest, and Kris's the middle. They were all two years apart. I am the eldest of the eight grandchildren, and we're all within an eight year range, so whenever we were together we played together. Today there were five of us at my aunt's house, and that's a rare configuration indeed. I can't remember the last time all eight of us were together, but it was probably when this picture was taken.
No; now that I think about it, it was at Opa's funeral.
Opa died in the dead of winter in 1979, two weeks after Christmas. It wasn't a surprise. He had spent the last six weeks of his life in the hospital, in constant pain, and died there. When I heard the phone ring at 1:00 in the morning, I knew what had happened. My mother knocked softly on my door, then came in and told me the news. I said, "Oh. OK." Rolled over and went back to sleep.
I was in high school, I was tough, and I was angry.
My grandfather smoked unfiltered Players cigarettes he rolled himself. Sometimes he'd buy ready-made packages. He used to send me to the store for them now and again, when I was a little girl. He'd let me keep the change, and buy whatever I wanted with it. Back then the Five and Dime uptown in Beamsville had a counter, between the magazine rack and the cash register, with a dozen or so big, open jars filled with loose candy. Jelly raspberries, and those cone-shaped orangey-pink marshmallow strawberries. The raspberries were 1/2¢ each, the strawberries were 1¢ each. There were licorice strings, and plastic-wrapped caramels. Those were 2¢. A little girl with a dime could have a ball. You filled a tiny paper bag with your selection, then took it to the cashier and told her how much you had in the bag. She never checked, and I never lied.
About the time I outgrew penny candy I told Opa I wouldn't buy his cigarettes for him anymore. I was an indignant child. Smoking is bad for you, everybody knew that. Everybody still knows that. I wasn't going to help him kill himself, is what I said.
He said nothing. And I'll never forget the look in his eyes: resignation. Acceptance. And infinite sadness.
The morning of Opa's funeral I got up and got ready for school as usual. My mother asked me what I was doing, and was shocked when I told her. How can you even think about going to school today? she cried. I hadn't thought about not going, I replied. What was the big deal? It's not like we didn't know he was going to die. It's not like he didn't do this to himself. I have no intention of inconveniencing myself over it.
Sometimes it terrifies me to remember how horrible children can be.
I didn't go to school. My mother wouldn't let me. She blocked the doorway when the schoolbus stopped at the end of our driveway. I wasn't inclined to walk five miles down the Escarpment, through the snow, to make my point.
I went to the funeral, and sat between my parents. I didn't talk to my cousins. Opa had been dead for three days. I hadn't cried.
The organist played. The minister from the Grace Lutheran Church in St. Catharines gave the eulogy. Opa never went to church, but Oma did. A funeral isn't for the deceased, it's for those they leave behind.
I don't remember when, exactly, it began, or what, if anything, precipitated it, but suddenly, and violently, I began to wail. Cry isn't the right word. It wasn't a sniffle that turned into a sob; it didn't come on gradually, and I didn't fight to hold it back. It came on like a vomit reflex, and when I opened my mouth out came a banshee.
My mother tried to shush me but it was no use. She had to lead me outside, where I continued to wail at the passersby of downtown Beamsville. Had it not been for the fact that we were standing outside Tallman's Funeral Home I'm sure they would have thought my mother was beating me.
I don't remember the rest of the service, nor do I remember driving to the cemetary, or having kaffee und küchen at the wake, though I'm told I did all of those things. I didn't return to that cemetary until twenty three years later, when my mother died. And I never cried for my grandfather again.
Until Cinderella gave me his lighter today.
Opa's lighter is not a Zippo afterall. It's marked CHAMP Austria US PAT No 2809511. A little online research puts the date around 1957. It's an antique, though I'm sure at the Roadshow they'd assign it a value of exactly $0. It's battered, scratched, and rusted. The spark wheel doesn't turn, and though there's no lighter fluid in it, I'm sure it wouldn't light if there were.
None of that matters to me.
My cousins considered my reaction ignominious, and couldn't understand why I would place an emotional value on what they called "the thing that killed Opa." They were all too young to remember what happened at the funeral.
They've never understood me, anyway.
When my relatives ask me what I want for Christmas, what they really mean is, what can we get you that we can (a) afford, and (b) understand. Few of the items on my wish list meet those criteria. Last year I asked for the bilingual (English/German) 50th anniversary edition of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and got the new Margaret Atwood book instead. That's OK; I like Atwood, too. But since my gaggle of cousins and aunts is bound to ask, and in case you're curious about what a postmodern girl like me would wish for under her tree, here are a few things I've noticed this year that got me excited:
Notebooks made from cheesy old book covers. It doesn't get much more PoMo than that.
Equally as original but dearer to my heart is a t-shirt made from Tim Bray's plate from the Oxford English Dictionary, featuring the word lustrous.
I'm just crazy about the U2 iPod Special Edition, because it's such ingenious co-marketing. And because I like U2.
Alias (season three) on DVD. Last year for Christmas I bought myself the first two seasons of this, my favourite TV series, and I am, if nothing else, a completist. Speaking of which, I also want the new Nirvana box set but just so you know: I'm not a bandwagon-jumper. I bought Nevermind the year it came out, and I own "Bleach."
A pair of pink Chanel sunglasses.
A Canon EOS digital camera.
What I want most of all, though, can't be tied with a ribbon or placed under a Christmas tree.
* * *
Go to the next story in sequence, in which we are introduced to Sass's mother. Or, skip ahead to find out how Sass survived Christmas, and what her New Year's resolution is. It takes almost two years, but Sass does get her Chanel sunglasses; a present from Jack.
This is my grandfather, my Opa, Nathanael Werner.
A few weeks ago my cousin Cinderella, who lives in California, sent me an email:
"I went through some old stuff on the weekend and discovered for some odd reason that I have Opa's old leather wallet, lighter and social insurance card. It was wedged somewhere between my Shaun Cassidy posters and my stack of diaries and journals that have documented my entire childhood! Any chance you want Opa's stuff? I'm going to toss it if you don't."You have Opa's Zippo? How on earth did it come to be in your possession?
Yes, oh yes, I want it.
I tried to find it after Opa died. I was just a kid; a teenager; it's not that I wanted to use it. To me, that lighter was a symbol of my grandfather. It was small; I wanted to carry it around in the back pocket of my Levi's, and pull it out from time to time when I needed to show someone how cool I was. I asked Oma what happened to Opa's lighter, but she didn't know. No one seemed to know.
To this day, I am instantly attracted to a man who lights my cigarette with a Zippo. I love the sound of it, the rasping, then the snapping shut. The smell of the butane. I judge a man's character by the skill with which he handles his Zippo. You know how, in a crowded room, when someone speaks your name you hear it across the din? I hear Zippos that way.
When Jack and I used to talk on the phone until 5:00 am, I could hear him periodically snapping the heavy chrome lid of his Zippo shut. It's not what made me fall in love with him, it's what makes me miss him, just like I miss my Opa.
Opa's birthday was August 16. The day he turned 63 was the day Elvis died. Perhaps that explains the emotional chord Graceland struck in me.
That was 1977. My parents and I had just returned from a two month sojourn to Germany, where I had bought this record by Peggy March called Es ist Schwer; the chorus of the title song goes, "Es ist schwer, dich zu vergessen. I can still sing the chorus. It's been running through my head since I started writing this story. I think I may still have the record. It means "It is hard to forget you."
Anyone who ever met my Opa would tell you, he's hard to forget.
Today we had a pre-Christmas family gathering at my aunt and uncle's house in the homeland. Cinderella and her husband, Prince Charming, were there, and because that's a rare occasion, our cousin Kristine made the trek from Kingston to add to the regular registry of relatives. Markus's wife Amy, who's new to the family, wasn't there, which was too bad; I like her a lot. A couple of weeks ago she had been on the phone with her sister in North Dakota, excitedly discussing her nephew's upcoming first birthday this weekend. Markus overheard Amy instructing her sister to "Videotape everything so that Markus and I can watch it!" Markus went directly to his computer, logged on, and bought her a plane ticket.
My Opa had three daughters: my mother was the eldest, Cinder's and Markus's the youngest, and Kris's the middle. They were all two years apart. I am the eldest of the eight grandchildren, and we're all within an eight year range, so whenever we were together we played together. Today there were five of us at my aunt's house, and that's a rare configuration indeed. I can't remember the last time all eight of us were together, but it was probably when this picture was taken.
No; now that I think about it, it was at Opa's funeral.
Opa died in the dead of winter in 1979, two weeks after Christmas. It wasn't a surprise. He had spent the last six weeks of his life in the hospital, in constant pain, and died there. When I heard the phone ring at 1:00 in the morning, I knew what had happened. My mother knocked softly on my door, then came in and told me the news. I said, "Oh. OK." Rolled over and went back to sleep.
I was in high school, I was tough, and I was angry.
My grandfather smoked unfiltered Players cigarettes he rolled himself. Sometimes he'd buy ready-made packages. He used to send me to the store for them now and again, when I was a little girl. He'd let me keep the change, and buy whatever I wanted with it. Back then the Five and Dime uptown in Beamsville had a counter, between the magazine rack and the cash register, with a dozen or so big, open jars filled with loose candy. Jelly raspberries, and those cone-shaped orangey-pink marshmallow strawberries. The raspberries were 1/2¢ each, the strawberries were 1¢ each. There were licorice strings, and plastic-wrapped caramels. Those were 2¢. A little girl with a dime could have a ball. You filled a tiny paper bag with your selection, then took it to the cashier and told her how much you had in the bag. She never checked, and I never lied.
About the time I outgrew penny candy I told Opa I wouldn't buy his cigarettes for him anymore. I was an indignant child. Smoking is bad for you, everybody knew that. Everybody still knows that. I wasn't going to help him kill himself, is what I said.
He said nothing. And I'll never forget the look in his eyes: resignation. Acceptance. And infinite sadness.
The morning of Opa's funeral I got up and got ready for school as usual. My mother asked me what I was doing, and was shocked when I told her. How can you even think about going to school today? she cried. I hadn't thought about not going, I replied. What was the big deal? It's not like we didn't know he was going to die. It's not like he didn't do this to himself. I have no intention of inconveniencing myself over it.
Sometimes it terrifies me to remember how horrible children can be.
I didn't go to school. My mother wouldn't let me. She blocked the doorway when the schoolbus stopped at the end of our driveway. I wasn't inclined to walk five miles down the Escarpment, through the snow, to make my point.
I went to the funeral, and sat between my parents. I didn't talk to my cousins. Opa had been dead for three days. I hadn't cried.
The organist played. The minister from the Grace Lutheran Church in St. Catharines gave the eulogy. Opa never went to church, but Oma did. A funeral isn't for the deceased, it's for those they leave behind.
I don't remember when, exactly, it began, or what, if anything, precipitated it, but suddenly, and violently, I began to wail. Cry isn't the right word. It wasn't a sniffle that turned into a sob; it didn't come on gradually, and I didn't fight to hold it back. It came on like a vomit reflex, and when I opened my mouth out came a banshee.
My mother tried to shush me but it was no use. She had to lead me outside, where I continued to wail at the passersby of downtown Beamsville. Had it not been for the fact that we were standing outside Tallman's Funeral Home I'm sure they would have thought my mother was beating me.
I don't remember the rest of the service, nor do I remember driving to the cemetary, or having kaffee und küchen at the wake, though I'm told I did all of those things. I didn't return to that cemetary until twenty three years later, when my mother died. And I never cried for my grandfather again.
Until Cinderella gave me his lighter today.
Opa's lighter is not a Zippo afterall. It's marked CHAMP Austria US PAT No 2809511. A little online research puts the date around 1957. It's an antique, though I'm sure at the Roadshow they'd assign it a value of exactly $0. It's battered, scratched, and rusted. The spark wheel doesn't turn, and though there's no lighter fluid in it, I'm sure it wouldn't light if there were.
None of that matters to me.
My cousins considered my reaction ignominious, and couldn't understand why I would place an emotional value on what they called "the thing that killed Opa." They were all too young to remember what happened at the funeral.
They've never understood me, anyway.
When my relatives ask me what I want for Christmas, what they really mean is, what can we get you that we can (a) afford, and (b) understand. Few of the items on my wish list meet those criteria. Last year I asked for the bilingual (English/German) 50th anniversary edition of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, and got the new Margaret Atwood book instead. That's OK; I like Atwood, too. But since my gaggle of cousins and aunts is bound to ask, and in case you're curious about what a postmodern girl like me would wish for under her tree, here are a few things I've noticed this year that got me excited:
Notebooks made from cheesy old book covers. It doesn't get much more PoMo than that.
Equally as original but dearer to my heart is a t-shirt made from Tim Bray's plate from the Oxford English Dictionary, featuring the word lustrous.
I'm just crazy about the U2 iPod Special Edition, because it's such ingenious co-marketing. And because I like U2.
Alias (season three) on DVD. Last year for Christmas I bought myself the first two seasons of this, my favourite TV series, and I am, if nothing else, a completist. Speaking of which, I also want the new Nirvana box set but just so you know: I'm not a bandwagon-jumper. I bought Nevermind the year it came out, and I own "Bleach."
A pair of pink Chanel sunglasses.
A Canon EOS digital camera.
What I want most of all, though, can't be tied with a ribbon or placed under a Christmas tree.
Go to the next story in sequence, in which we are introduced to Sass's mother. Or, skip ahead to find out how Sass survived Christmas, and what her New Year's resolution is. It takes almost two years, but Sass does get her Chanel sunglasses; a present from Jack.
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