Fathers and Daughters

 

Sunday is Father's Day in the US and for Nicole's Friday Face Off I want to talk about two fathers that I know fairly well.

One is my father, my Vati. He was a vet - first as a country vet in Lower Saxony where he had his own practice, later as a vet with the county in Northrhine-Westphalia - no more his own practice, but with a wide range of responsibilities. I'm pretty sure I have my love for animals from him.

In Switzerland, 1958

He was not an easy man. I think there was always an invisible burden about him that he carried after the end of World War II. He had lost almost all of his class mates in the war, he wasn't able to return to his home from where his parents and younger sister had to flee at the end of March 1945 and it took him more than a year to finally find his family again after he came back from captivity as a prisoner of war. He never seemed to lose his sense of not belonging.

My dad was 21 years old when the war ended. Like all his classmates he was immediately drafted into the Wehrmacht after he graduated from high school. He was with the Navy and did his training on a submarine. He was a POW for a year and after that traveled around many areas of Germany, often in open freight wagons, searching for his parents and sister. The stories he told me about that time are wild - the country was in shambles, the Black Market ruled (my dad had nothing to trade) and the only place that offered help regarding finding family and missing persons was the Red Cross that, because of the difficult times and the high demand, worked slowly. Eventually, after a lot of "wrong" turns, he found his parents and soon after he started to study veterinary medicine at the University of Gießen.

In 1954 he met my mother in a tiny village in Lower Saxony where she had lived as a refugee since 1945. He had the opportunity to work in a veterinary practice (the same one he later took over) there. They got married in 1955 in Lüneburg, a year later my brother came along and another four years later I completed the family. At that time my oldest sister from my mother's first marriage was already 17 years old.

There aren't many photos of my dad and myself. He was the photographer of the family; my mother was hopeless with the camera. I suspect that the few photos of my dad and myself were taken by my mom's younger sister, my godmother.

My relationship with my dad wasn't free of tension. We could drive each other up the wall. But he was also the one who always believed in me and encouraged me. He had confidence in me and supported me. He was extremely proud when I got my master's degree in both Chinese Studies and English Literature (beside my dad, I was the only one in our family who went to university). He always thought that I could do "big things" (what ever that was supposed to be) and in that he differed greatly from my mom.

I mentioned that he was the only photographer in the family. Well, that eventually changed. I was very curious about his camera and eager to try it out. One day he let me take a photo with his precious camera for the first time. I have been hooked ever since. This was my very first photo, taken on a hike in Austria in 1968.

My sister's husband and their three children never accepted my dad and more or less rejected him. It must have been very hurtful to him. He was so incredibly happy when Kaefer came along (my brother doesn't have any kids) and he spoiled her in every way possible.

He died at the age of 89. In the weeks and months before he died we often talked on the phone, and it was then that he told me a lot about his youth. I remember that I always had paper and pencil ready when we talked and I wrote everything down. 

And this little girl, Kaefer, made another man a father. A wonderful father.

The Geek and I had met in 1996 at Hewlett Packard in Böblingen, Germany, where we both worked - in two different departments, but on the same floor in the same division. We eventually became one of the many HP marriages and in 1998 Kaefer was born. She turned our life upside down, but in a very good and joyful way. We were a very happy family, and I believe we still are.

The Geek has been an amazing dad from day 1. Actually I should say from day 0, since we went through a very difficult pregnancy with a 9-week stay in the hospital for me. He really was my rock back then.

I was very lucky that I could stay home with Kaefer - I was 38 when she was born and had accomplished a few things in my life. This was a new chapter and I fully embraced it as a new mom. When the Geek came home in the evening, he played with her, he changed her diapers and on Sundays he would bathe her. Those were very special times for both of them. They "rode horses" together - one of my favorite photos.

And she was safe on his arm.

This reminds me of my dad and myself:

Three years later, in April 2001, our California adventure began.  The Geek had a lot of work, but he still had time for Kaefer. He always has had time for her. 

Letting the little princess ride on his back.

They both love to ice skate and do "daring" things like jumping from a plane. They enjoy playing competitive games together and share their love for science.

We visited Yosemite so many times. We took her to nature whenever we could. We hiked and when she got tired, the Geek would carry her. He was her rock as much as he has been mine.

We traveled the States, seeking nature over and over again. This is the girl whose horrible parents didn't take her to Disneyland, not even once (while all her friends did go). Instead, she developed a deep love and respect for everything nature. She believes in science - we all do.

My all-time favorite photo, Valley of Fire, Nevada, Thanksgiving 2013

And suddenly she was gone - first to college at UC Davis, then to Germany where she still lives. The bond between the two is still very strong and I am so grateful for that.

I love them both so much (and apologize for the long post).

Happy Faces

 

My brother and myself, 1960

Today is the day of Nicole's FFO Portrait Challenge and I admit that I first didn't want to participate. But then I read that photographs are accepted as well, so I'm in. Nicole suggested five categories - happy, sad, tired, surprised or anger. Sadly, there was no "goofy" category (I have a good amount of those), so I opted for the happy faces. The hardest part was to make a selection.

This picture was taken in 1962 or 1963. My paternal grandparents who lived in Heidelberg used to go to Timmendorfer Strand at the Baltic Sea for their summer vacation. (I guess being at the Baltic Sea still felt a little bit like home for them after they got out of Danzig [Gdansk] with the last refugee ship at the end of March 1945 - this was called "Operation Hannibal".) When we still lived in Lower Saxony, not too far away from Hamburg, my parents, brother and I would go and visit them since it wasn't a very long drive. It had a lot of magic for us children since we were allowed to ride on these carousel figures along the Strandpromenade (seafront or boardwalk) - it was my grandpa who generously fed pieces of 10 Pfennig in the slots. It felt like heaven for us. You can see my grandma behind me and the pink blouse on the right belongs to my mom.

When I first thought of a happy, laughing face, I was thinking of this picture of Kaefer, taken when she was almost 18 months old.

She is sitting in her stroller and had just succeeded "stealing" her dad's hat. She was playing around with it - I did take an entire series of photos (this was all still on film, done with my SLR camera), and my favorite one is this one:

Still very happy, but there is also a hint of mischievous - she was a little rascal.

No explanatory words needed for the next one.

She truly was a happy child.

And she still is - happy, not a child anymore -, especially when animals are involved.

But I also found a non-human happy face. I had almost forgotten that I have this. I took it back in 1999 when we visited our relatives in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (in the Northeast of Germany) where they had a horse farm. Every morning Kaefer would walk around the open stables and greet the horses, completely fearless. That's when I captured this horse - it's definitely laughing!

Yeehaw!

A Beacon in the Night

 

Barnegat Light, NJ

Lighthouses have always held a magical fascination for me. A lonely, firm post on a rugged shore, they send their lights out to the souls on the dark oceans. Their beacon of bright light can be seen as a sign of hope or just as a light source that shortly brightens the darkness - here it comes, there it goes, and here is comes again.

When I was a child of six and seven years old, my family spent the summer vacation in Denmark, in a small summerhouse amidst the dunes in Jutland. The sandy beaches were incredibly wide and seemed to be endless. One of my fondest memories is walking along the beach with my parents and older brother at twilight and seeing Rubjerg Knude lighthouse further up the coast, sending its white beacon across the North Sea, again and again in its steady rhythm. I felt the comfort of my family and since then I've always associated lighthouses with safety - not only for the ships out on the oceans of the world, but a safe haven for my emotions as well.

Of course there is also the solitude of a lighthouse, its tall lone standing. I have often dreamed about what it would be like to live in a lighthouse. I imagined a big light room with white washed walls. A desk would be in front of a window from which I could see the open sea and just a little bit of shoreline. A vase with yellow and orange flowers would sit on the desk. Here I would sit and write novels all day and live my solitary writer's life. So romantic.

Dreams... my life has turned out very differently. But I live close to one of the most beautiful coastlines that gives many lighthouses a home - places you can visit and learn about lighthouse keepers and horrendous ship accidents. Seeing those lighthouses still give me that feeling of having reached a safe haven - where my dreams continue to live and delight me.

(first written for Vision and Verb almost exactly 15 years ago)

December Reflections

 

Like every December I participated in Susannah Conway's December Reflections on Instagram. It is a good way for me to reflect on the year, go through my photos and just take it a bit slow. Sometimes I feel the prompts are not really for me, but funny enough I always come up with something.

Here are my 31 photos. There are quite some faces to see and they, of course, are for Nicole's Friday Face Off.

There are a couple photos I want to say a few sentences about.

Day 24 was "patience". How do you express this in one photo? I was a bit lost first, but then I thought of my mom who loved to do jigsaw puzzles. There was a specific one of a painting by Albrecht Altdorfer, "The Battle of Alexander at Issus".

We had that as a puzzle of 1500 pieces and every year we would put it together between Christmas and New Year's Eve. Well, it was my mom who did most of it, but we all loved to help and find those pieces that just seem to disappear and then magically reappear right before you. This painting is probably the one I know best. When the puzzle was finally finished, it would be left on the table for a couple days and then put apart again and back into the box until the following Christmas.

Here is my mom working on a different puzzle (I think this was the English countryside):

Day 25's prompt was "memories". That is a wide open field. I chose a photo of my family - i.e. my husband and daughter, and my parents. This was taken during one of our visits back home. Staying with Omi and Opi was always special for Kaefer and I am so glad that she has these memories of happy, careless times with them. Both my parents adored her and she in turn adored her grandparents.

One last photo, for the prompt "birds", day 5. I had taken this photo of a Black-crowned Night Heron at the lake on a very foggy day when the lake was very still. The bird - one of my most favorites - is also perfectly still (that could have worked for "patience" as well) and the picture seems to be all grey in different shades. But there is the tip of the branch the heron is sitting on that has some light color as well as some slightly lighter part on the heron's chest where one solitary dappled ray of sun has hit. Not a masterpiece, but an image that truly reflects that morning.

I want to thank you, my wonderful readers, for reading my blog, leaving thoughtful comments and getting in touch outside of my blog. Thank you to those who checked in after our very forceful storms in the last week. And thank you for taking up with my sometimes weird English expressions that are colored by German.

To all of you I wish a happy and healthy 2026.

The Lilac in my Garden

 

Lilac - or French Lilac as it is called here, "Flieder" in German - is a shrub or small tree that you can find all over Germany. There, it usually blooms in May and fills the air with its wonderful scent. California is not the best place for lilac - the summers are too hot (at least in many areas) and the winters are too mild. Lilac needs a good and decent winter chill to perform to its full glory.

And still I have lilac in my garden. This year they are doing especiallywell - maybe because we had some pretty cold days in the winter.

I planted this particular one in memory of my dad who passed away in 2014.

He loved lilac. Specifically, he liked the scent of lilac. Whenever he saw a blooming lilac he would go there and put his nose close to the flower, inhaling the typical lilac perfume. Sometimes we would all be in the car - my parents, my brother and I - driving somewhere when he would suddenly stop and jump out of the car. He had seen a lilac by the side of the road and of course! he had to smell it. This didn't happen once but several times. I remember that I felt rather embarrassed as a child about this behavior.

Today, I understand him so much better! I wish he could smell my lilac.

This is one of my fondest memories of my dad. He was a difficult man and we often argued, but the older I get the more important the good memories become - and this is perfectly fine with me. I only wish I had told him how many good memories I have of him.

And since this is a post for Elizabeth's T stands for Tuesday and I'm writing about my dad, I'm sharing a drink my dad often enjoyed - a cold German beer (this picture, however, I had taken in a German restaurant in Manhattan).

This was June!

Social distanced Happy Hour with the neighbors

In June I gave myself a little challenge of taking at least one photo each day. I had become rather lazy with photography and I hadn't used my big camera since February when I last visited the beach. Thankfully there were several occasions in June when I finally used the big camera again - it felt so good.

Sometime in late April or early May (I can't remember exactly when) the neighbors in our corner started to gather for a happy hour on Fridays at five in the afternoon. We first were sitting by the side of the street; everybody brought their chair and drink of choice and we would sit 6ft. apart from each other and chat. It was wonderful to meet up. After a few weeks one of the neighbors had the genius idea to move to the cul-de-sac at the corner - it's quieter and it also offers more shade. Since then we have met up every Friday for an hour and a half to two hours and it is one of the highlights of the week.

The little girl a couple houses down turned four and we did a drive-by birthday "party" for her. It was a lot of fun to see the decorated cars and bicycles pass by, honking their horns and ringing their bells.

During June I continued my walks, discovering the back alleys in the historical district of the town. These back alleys are very quiet and have almost a rural feel - it's hard to believe that we are not far from downtown when you walk here. They offer a lot of shade and unpaved trails.

I enjoyed my June garden a lot. The poppies were the bright spots and happily displayed their beauty. They all came from the poppies that I had first sown eight years ago. Since then they have self-sown every year - so easy.

Oh - and we had some very hot days in June when I simply wasn't up to cooking dinner. So I made tuna poké with seaweed, rice, avocado, and lots of sesame.

I was very happy when the Rural Cemetery was re-opened at the end of May. I've been there many times and each time I discover something new and see something from a different perspective. That place is never crowded, there are nature trails and lots of space to walk.

The glowing bear - Lumibär - at our entrance is from Germany. I bought it when the Geek and I were still dating. We were walking to our favorite café in Tübingen when we passed a shop that had several of these bears in different colors in their windows. There was no price, however. The Geek went inside to inquire about the price - it wasn't exactly cheap, but not very expensive either. Over some coffee and breakfast I pondered about it and decided that it would be fun to have it. When we entered the store the clerk greeted us with the words "Which color should it be?" We had to laugh about that. I chose the orange Lumibär (of course!) - that was in 1996. He moved with us to the US, he was in our evacuation "bag" - and next year he will turn 25. He shines in the mornings and evenings and the kids in the neighborhood love him. Some call him the "giant gummy bear".

We celebrated a big event in June - Kaefer graduated from the University of California, Davis. On June 12th was the virtual commencement celebration that we watched together. Of course it was very different from the "real" thing, but the important thing is that she graduated. She will now do her Masters, either in Munich or in London. She got in both programs and now has to decide where she wants to go.

The middle of June brought more days in the garden and walks through the - like-minded - neighborhood. Friends of us came over for a social distanced couple of hours of good conversation and good wine, lots of laughing and the faint feeling of some kind of normalcy. One Sunday we visited the Lavender Labyrinth at a lavender farm which was fun - more pictures will probably follow in another blogpost.

Kaefer went back to Davis to pack more of her things and I drove over one day to take graduation pictures of her and one of her best friends who was also her work mate. We took photos at different locations on campus that have had some meaning for them during those four years, and also a picture of her and myself. From that day on Kaefer has been staying with us which is a big gift for us before she will move to Europe.

I have started knitting a summer sweater for her, but I'm getting second thoughts about the neckline. It is a technique I have never done before and I'm a bit nervous about it. Maybe I should practice before!

The last week of June... Kaefer and I went to the lavender garden of Matanzas Creek Winery (I wrote about those gardens here, here and here) to take a few more graduation photos. I simply love this place. I also finally went back to Crane Creek Regional Park - I'm still avoiding the lake since there are just too many people who don't distance or wear masks, but it's safe in Crane Creek - not many people and those I met were wearing masks when we were passing each other. This is another place that feeds my soul and I just hope that they don't close the parks again. Unfortunately the number of cases are going up again rather speedily (which I think results from opening up too early and too fast) and I wouldn't be surprised if we took a few steps back again.

Since the second week of June I'm officially on summer break. I had my last class with the German School on June 10th (I decided to offer two conversation classes of four weeks each) and am glad to have some "real" free time. However, I'm also on the "re-opening" committee of the German School where we work on different strategies on how to re-open our school in the fall. That is a ton of work!

How was your June? What are you doing this summer?

To all of you in the US - have a happy Fourth!