Behind this Weiden gate, turn to the right, walk up the wider brick way to the stoop on the left, through a heavy door via thick key, up a spiraling flight of stairs, through another heavy door with the same key, there, in a kitchen, sits a mother and two daughters and a gray cat. The mother makes german pancakes, as she was always taught how to (with a fork), thin like crepes, and chocolate sauce to go with, instead of her own childhood's sugar and butter filling. "Du bist eine kleine schmutzige maus," she says to the smaller daughter. The daughter repeats it back, "Du bish eine kleine shmushy mouse." They laugh. Then repeat until she says it just right herself, "Du bist eine kleine schmutzige maus." She eats the first crepe and feels proud of the insult she now wields for one of her fussier friends in the future. She daydreams of knowing German fully by then, and her eyes twinkle at her pronunciation already rolling off so easily, assuring her that she can do this year here, even as someone arriving with only English, and every friend in America. The gray cat sits in the window. She notices the steam of the crepes, and her nose presses a small circle as she looks down two floors to the blackberry bushes below, perhaps spying her own kleine schmutzige maus under an ivy leaf. 
It is Edel's eighth birthday today. Seven years of safe, this day represents to me (on a deeper layer that remains hypervigilant and is, with misfortune, ever keeping track). And, now this ocean of safety in place. It is something I plan to sit with and feel. What it feels to be safe, to be allowed to be safe, to be allowed to carry a child across an ocean whom you are and have always been raising alone in order to keep safe. I didn't think we'd ever get something like this. But we do, it turns out. Her sister and I did, and now we three do too. I will sit with this and perhaps watch the hypervigilance and fear understand something they haven't yet. Someday I look forward to telling her of this in a way that shows the celebration of this, the deepest thanks for this - for where we are internally and externally on this eighth birthday of hers.
Though not, these look so like edelweiss on her shirt and in hand. Maybe we will find and gently touch some this year somewhere in Germany. I wonder what their season and cycles are, their preferred alpine elevation, if anything eats them, or likes to grow near them. "Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow." This ecosystem that made our dna coding is interestingly not as known as the one that made our muscles and bones, topography of Glacier and surround. I'd like the two topographies to meet. From the song it seems it is an early spring flower in the mountains. Edel is a German word that means strong, noble, and you see it everywhere on maps and on objects (edelschokolade, edelfeld, edeldorfer...), and because of this I always have known it grew up high in rugged, yet protected terrain.
The second boy from the right is John Voss. He's just turned 8 that day too, and he's in his backyard of 147 Sheboygan Street, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. It's 1966. He's my dad, and somewhere near is my beloved Omi, likely the one taking the photo, or perhaps prepping one of her fruit tortes for his celebration with his five friends. He texted Edel today to tell her more tales of the time he lived in Germany as a kid too, and to send her this photo on her 8th birthday. Today he told us of the time he went caving for crystals with the prince of Hohenzollern, his own grandparents living in the Villa Eugenia in Hechingen below the castle. Deutsche Prinzessin, I remind Edel with a smile, and she waves me off, speaking of wishing to be regular. You can always fill the castle with katzen who don't have homes, I respond. This she likes, daughter of a sparkly-eyed dreamer, granddaughter of a jolly-natured, treasure-hunting dreamer, great-granddaughter of two twinkly-eyed dreamers. 
I always adored the going into my Oma's driveway, on the right side of her Sheboygan house just like this. Three stories of red, deep and wide, and so much magic inside. May I ever remember to be as she was at the bottom of the spiral staircase, waiting to light up the eyes of others in the wee hours of morning. If one person is so synonymous with love and ways of being in another's body, does not that person, even after death, get carried with through all the gates and doors the other goes, longing so for them to be right there beside?
Behind this Weiden gate, turn to the right, walk up the wider brick way to the stoop on the left, through a heavy door via thick key, up a spiraling flight of stairs, through another heavy door with the same key, there, in a kitchen, sits a mother and two daughters and a gray cat. The mother makes german pancakes, as she was always taught how to (with a fork), thin like crepes, and chocolate sauce to go with, instead of her own childhood's sugar and butter filling. "Du bist eine kleine schmutzige maus," she says to the smaller daughter. The daughter repeats it back, "Du bish eine kleine shmushy mouse." They laugh. Then repeat until she says it just right herself, "Du bist eine kleine schmutzige maus." She eats the first crepe and feels proud of the insult she now wields for one of her fussier friends in the future. She daydreams of knowing German fully by then, and her eyes twinkle at her pronunciation already rolling off so easily, assuring her that she can do this year here, even as someone arriving with only English, and every friend in America. The gray cat sits in the window. She notices the steam of the crepes, and her nose presses a small circle as she looks down two floors to the blackberry bushes below, perhaps spying her own kleine schmutzige maus under an ivy leaf. 
Though not, these look so like edelweiss on her shirt and in hand. Maybe we will find and gently touch some this year somewhere in Germany. I wonder what their season and cycles are, their preferred alpine elevation, if anything eats them, or likes to grow near them. "Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow." This ecosystem that made our dna coding is interestingly not as known as the one that made our muscles and bones, topography of Glacier and surround. I'd like the two topographies to meet. From the song it seems it is an early spring flower in the mountains. Edel is a German word that means strong, noble, and you see it everywhere on maps and on objects (edelschokolade, edelfeld, edeldorfer...), and because of this I always have known it grew up high in rugged, yet protected terrain.
The second boy from the right is John Voss. He's just turned 8 that day too, and he's in his backyard of 147 Sheboygan Street, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. It's 1966. He's my dad, and somewhere near is my beloved Omi, likely the one taking the photo, or perhaps prepping one of her fruit tortes for his celebration with his five friends. He texted Edel today to tell her more tales of the time he lived in Germany as a kid too, and to send her this photo on her 8th birthday. Today he told us of the time he went caving for crystals with the prince of Hohenzollern, his own grandparents living in the Villa Eugenia in Hechingen below the castle. Deutsche Prinzessin, I remind Edel with a smile, and she waves me off, speaking of wishing to be regular. You can always fill the castle with katzen who don't have homes, I respond. This she likes, daughter of a sparkly-eyed dreamer, granddaughter of a jolly-natured, treasure-hunting dreamer, great-granddaughter of two twinkly-eyed dreamers. 
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