Summer

When I am with Quinn, I want more than anything to exist with her completely, so the moment will somehow get absorbed into my cells and stay there forever. I want it all to be saved, in detail. I want desperately, to control my wandering thoughts, ignore my impulse to check email, and stop my mental tallying of what work is left to do. I want to stop thinking about other people’s needs when I am with her; I just want to be there with and for her. I want this and yet I often fail to achieve it. 

By the end of this school year, Quinn would often call to me impatiently, while I replied to just one more message. The tone in her voice made clear that she knew I was putting meaningless things before her, before I had realized that that was what I was doing. The school year felt out of control for me by the end. I hadn’t exercised in months, I hadn’t slept well, I hadn’t taken any breaks. In April, when we had two weeks off, I checked and responded to email every day. By the end of that vacation, I felt more exhausted than before. So exhausted, in fact, that even though I knew my Vitamin D level was probably low, I couldn’t muster the energy to swallow a pill. I’d open the medicine cabinet, look at the vitamin bottle, sigh hopelessly, and close the medicine cabinet. I gave up trying and kept thinking, I just have to make it to summer. And in the meantime, through the month of May, I often woke up at 5 am and snuck out of the house by 6 am so Sam and Quinn could sleep and I could get to work. Many mornings I was at my desk before 6:30 am, and I wouldn’t see her until 5:15 pm when I picked her up.

As the weeks ticked by, each seemingly more busy than the last, Quinn held up pretty well, but she was always craving more time with us. Our weekends usually involved taking turns: on Saturday I would go to work and Sam would “take Quinn,” and then on Sunday we’d swap. I usually preferred to work Saturday so that I would have Sunday to look forward to--it would motivate me to get as much done on Saturday as possible, so I could actually enjoy my time with her, rather than be stuck feeling like it was another duty I had to perform. Still, our time together on Sundays was often spent catching up from the week past or preparing for the one ahead--we’d do laundry, clean, grocery shop--and Quinn was generally pretty tolerant. 

On one Sunday in particular, I recall her working on chores with me from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon. Even Sam would have difficulty keeping his head in the game for that long, but Quinn, at four years old, worked without complaint for six hours. She emptied the dishwasher, raked leaves out of the gardens, folded laundry...and who knows what else. And even when she hit her limit, she was good humored about it. “Mom!” she urged, “we’ve been working for hours! Can we please do something fun now?” It was a reasonable request and fortunately she didn’t notice that the “fun” thing I offered was also, partially, one of our remaining chores: “How about a bath,” I asked her, “and after your bath we can cut your hair and paint your nails?” Quinn loves to “get fancy,” so to her this was a perfect idea. When the bath was done and I had snipped off two or three inches of her hair, I set her up on a low stool in my bedroom, and I sat at her feet with nail clippers and polish. To start, I rubbed some lotion onto her little freshly bathed feet and legs. “What is that!?!” she asked. “Just some lotion to keep your skin feeling smooth,” I told her. “OH!” she said, sounding a bit like someone’s grandmother, “that is a squirt of JOY!” 

I fell over laughing and then she did too. When we spend time together, and we’re not working, we crack each other up.

I thought of that moment again and again as spring wore on and it was one of the many sweet memories that finally helped me to set some boundaries for myself this summer. Quinn is only going to be four once. And I’ve been missing some of this time, putting her off, rushing her, listening to her with only a portion of my attention. I haven’t disciplined myself well enough in this regard and haven’t forced myself to block out the ridiculous internet distractions I’m susceptible to when I’m tired--even though I know how pointless they are. And yet in all my wasted internet time, I haven’t even written stories for my blog. I’ve become increasingly protective of her privacy as she’s gotten older, especially this year as I watched a lot of mean things happen between kids on the internet, and I don’t want to contribute any material that might some day be used to embarrass her. Still, I want to keep writing and saving her stories; this is a problem I’m working to solve for myself.

When Quinn was a language-less baby, lying on a blanket, often seemingly in another world than the one I was inhabiting, these issues weren’t issues. But now that she is my action-packed, observant, thoughtful little buddy, everything is different. By the time I had to start making summer daycare plans for Quinn this spring, it was clear to me that I didn’t want to make summer daycare plans; I wanted to take her out of school completely and have her to myself. For the past three summers, because we’ve had to pay to hold her spot, it’s been easy for me to justify continuing to drop her off, keeping her in her routine at school, and using that time for other things. But all I could think of this year was that I wanted Quinn to have the kind of summer vacation that I used to have as a kid. 

Memories of summers with my family are vivid. I remember dividing the back of my dad’s Volkswagen Rabbit in half with the big blue suitcase so my sister and I could each make a fort with pillows and blankets and books for the long drive from Rochester to Lake Winnepesauke. I remember the taste of the birch beer soda my grandfather would have stocked for us in the garage when we arrived, and the maple candy, playing cards and stationery my grandmother would tuck into the cubbies of our shared desk in the back bedroom. I remember always being in a bathing suit, and my mom and grandmother always being in their bathing suits, and I remember that the days and weeks and months of summer felt very long.

It’s a hard fact of life to know that time speeds up and then never slows down again. But it is also true that when you can exist fully in a moment, that moment is like a long hard squeeze on the brakes--the earth spins a bit more slowly for that instant...just long enough for you to look around and breathe it in and acknowledge the full volume of joy, or satisfaction, or gratitude, or maybe just rightness that you feel. So right now I’m working to break some bad habits of time and mind that have started to take root in the chaos of a busy year, and I’m bearing down hard on the brakes for this short bit of summer we have.

On Father’s Day weekend, as I watched Sam carrying our exhausted daughter down the bottom portion of the trail from Taft Lodge on Mount Mansfield, after a grueling six hour roundtrip hike, I felt that slow motion swell of love and gratitude. It was supposed to have been an overnight. I got Quinn pumped to sleep in the cabin on the top of Vermont’s highest peak, to ensure she would make it up the trail. She had her brand new purple sleeping bag packed up, and her purple pocket knife with her name on it, and she was ready. And when we got to the top and decided with our friends that, because of the weather moving in, we were going to hike back down while it was still dry, Quinn handled the news pretty well. She cried at first, disappointed, and that made me cry a bit too, but I told her how proud I was of her, and how impressed I was that she made it all the way up to the top, and then she took a deep thoughtful breath and said, “Thanks for saying that, Mom. Okay. I’m ready to go down now.”  By the end, her eyes were closing as she walked, and Sam carried her, along with her Frozen backpack that had her pink blanket and some GORP in it, and his own gigantic backpack, with his sleeping gear, all of our food, and a bottle of wine he carried up as a surprise. And as I watched them go down the trail in front of me, my heart swelled and time slowed down and I felt it all absorb into my cells.

There have been many moments like that already this summer. Like when she sat on the front of my paddleboard for the first time and leaned against my legs as I paddled her around Blueberry Lake. And when she sat on my lap in the Poconos with dozens of Jackson cousins and second cousins all around, with her cheek nestled against my cheek, as we watched the family’s Fourth of July fireworks. And again later that night when we snuck back to our bed in the Secret Hideout above grandma’s shed to sleep in the woods. 

Or when I looked over at her, at the sandy beach on Saranac Lake, and realized she trusted her pink shark life jacket for the first time and was swimming, on her own, with arms and legs in motion. I felt it watching her hold Char’s hand as they walked around the Adirondack Wild Center talking about flowers and turtles and owls and things. And again, a few days later, when she asked me for one more hug before she worked up the courage to let my hairdresser wash her hair for the first time. And then, a couple of hours after that, when she sat on Church Street eating her strawberry ice cream watching “Tony Briefcase” do his juggling show. And when she started a back and forth banter with the street performer, to the delight of strangers all around, until he begged, “Would someone please get this kid her own show!?!” 

I felt focused and happy the day Quinn and I gathered buckets of lupine seeds and spread them all around our yard in hopes they might take hold for next year. And the day Quinn agreed to help us stack wood and she came out wearing her pink princess “work” gloves, and she actually worked hard for hours...filling the tractor bucket with wood, her dad’s earplugs in her ears for protection from the loud noise, driving the tractor on his lap, scrambling to get each log that was her size and add it to the pile. That night at dinner, when I told her what a “bad ass” she was turning into, she asked me what that meant. I told her a bad ass is someone who is tough and does it all--hikes big mountains, swims in cold lakes and rivers, stacks wood, is strong and brave. “Well, what about a “good ass” then? I want to be a good ass!” When we all spend time together, and we’re not worrying about work, we crack each other up.

Four years ago, Sam and I took Quinn camping for the first time, at Green River Reservoir. She was ten months old and had just started crawling. I had imagined it would be a heavenly and memorable time, but it was mostly a hot, buggy, screaming-baby disaster. It’s taken us four years to reattempt it. This time it was all I hoped for the first time, and more. In our 24 hour stay this week, we canoed, swam, picnicked, read books, whittled sticks, roasted marshmallows, listened to loons, watched for fish, checked out beaver dams, and looked out at the world silently for long periods of time.

Right before bed the other night, looking out at the calm lake, I couldn’t resist the pull to go out in the boat one more time. Quinn felt the pull too and wanted to come with me. We slid the canoe back into the water and paddled out through the lily pads to open water. We glided past the campsite where Sam and I stayed five years ago, when I was at the very end of my pregnancy, just weeks away from her birth. I showed her the spot where I swam buoyed by her, and where I paddled by myself at sunset wondering about her. This time, Quinn and I paddled out over glassy water together, admiring the purple in the evening sky. She looked back at me periodically to remind herself how to hold the paddle, and to smile at me. I felt certain that we were sharing the same feelings in that moment. I told her I had waited a very long time to be doing what we were doing right then--maybe even my whole life--to be canoeing with my own wonderful daughter. “Thanks for saying that to me, Mom,” she said. And that’s all we said for a long while after. It was all we had to say.

As much as I often feel like I understand her, Quinn still surprises me all the time. When we paddled back to camp the next morning, after exploring out on the lake, and swimming and reading the end of Charlotte’s Web on an island, she said “Mom? Can I have a little private talk with you over by the tent?” I’ve learned to trust her when she says she wants to talk to me privately, as they are always meaningful talks, so I followed her to the tent. “Do you want to know why my eyes had tears back in the boat? It’s because Charlotte died,” she said, as she tried, but failed, to hold her fresh tears back. I picked her up and she wrapped her arms around me and buried her face at the curve of my neck. “Thank you for buying that book for me, Mom. I really loved it.” I was amazed to see her already capable of recognizing the potential for beauty even in sadness.  “You’re a girl with a really big heart, aren’t you,” I asked. And she nodded as she tried to pull herself together. 

I don’t know when my earliest memories started to take hold. They blur together now in categories rather than in a specific timeline. There are memories of summer, and of my mom, of early adventures and important firsts and favorite books. I had a lot of time as a kid, and freedom, and the focused attention of my mom and dad when I wanted it. These factors, I’m sure, combined to make all that was good possible. I realize now what tremendous gifts they were. I really hope I don’t screw up the formula.

Dance More

I find myself, often, circling around the metaphysical confluence of my mother’s absence and my daughter’s presence. The two currents meet, press against each other, and ultimately merge into one driving force.

I was on a massage table this week, having work done by a woman who seemed to know everything about me simply by touching me, or being near me. I didn’t tell her anything, and she didn’t ask, she just started making observations: You don’t breathe enough. You are a perfectionist and you really don’t like when you’re not in control. You had a bad cold this winter, and you suffer from interrupted sleep, but the good news is you don’t get headaches. Your job is challenging for you because you’re really an introvert who has to function as an extrovert…and then this: There is a fear in you...I know everyone has fears, and I don’t need to know what yours is, but in you, it is deep.

Driving home, last weekend, from the wedding of some friends, I was reflecting on how much the bride seemed to enjoy being the bride. She was lovely and happy and graceful. Her groom was entranced, as were all of the guests. This has been true, I think, of every bride I’ve ever seen--except myself. I’ve never thought of myself as introverted. I’m good with people. I know how to socialize in a variety of different settings, I can make people laugh, hold my own in conversation, and make others feel comfortable and included. I enjoy being in front of my students; I enjoy leading the class and love when the kids are engaged and having fun. But when I was the bride, I was incredibly uncomfortable. I love hosting parties, but my idea of hosting is generally orchestrating a pleasant time for others from behind the scenes. 

After my massage, I searched for introvert online and did a personality test. I read this synopsis after giving my answers: “Given the choice, you'll devote your social energy to the people you care about most, preferring a glass of wine with a close friend to a party full of strangers. You think before you speak, and relish solitude. You feel energized when focusing deeply on a subject or activity that really interests you. You have an active inner life, and are at your best when you tap into its riches.” (I'm writing this from my friend Char's quiet cabin on the still-frozen Saranac Lake, glad for the solitude)

While I don’t always think before I speak, the rest of the synopsis accurately describes me. And I did have a bad cold this winter (all of December), and I don’t breathe deeply enough. I will never forget the awful day when my trumpet teacher in sixth grade, Mr. Depesquale, put his hand on my stomach to try to teach me how to breathe deeply into my abdomen, rather than the shallow lung breaths I was taking; at that point I'm pretty sure I held my breath. I do suffer interrupted sleep, almost nightly, and it’s true that I rarely get headaches. I hate being out of control and I do aim for perfection, though I try to temper that by tolerating the greasy handprints and dog nose prints on the door glass, low windows and stainless steel of my house. My masseuse was incredibly accurate in her reading of me. And when she observed that I was harboring some sort of deep fear, I knew what it was instantly and without doubt. 

If Sam had been on the table, and she had been making such observations about him, he would have politely ignored her. He is a skeptical and rational person, but I have always believed in the potential for that kind of mystical knowledge. As a kid I had a reoccurring dream that our house burned down; when we moved to a new house, the dream moved with me. Each time my house burned down, there was always one wall left standing in the ruble: the wall that my grandfather’s sunset painting was on. I was obsessed with sunsets, and in awe of my grandfather. At the lake, most evenings, I sat on the black slanted rock on the backside of the dock by myself, watching the sky light up as the sun went down. I wrote in my journal, took pictures, and just tried to capture the immense and magical beauty for my memory. 

One summer my grandfather told my sister and me that we could go downstairs to his painting studio and choose one of his paintings to keep. Most were sailboats or seascapes, some were biplanes, some were houses. There was one scary and alluring topless woman I couldn’t stop myself from looking at when no one was looking at me, and there was one flame orange sunset over a small sandy island with a palm tree. The sunset was unique among his other work and it was, without doubt, my favorite. I loved it as it was in spite of the fact that he cringed when I chose it and told me it wasn’t finished. I couldn’t be dissuaded; he said I could pick any one I wanted and I desperately wanted it. With visible hesitation he agreed, but he told me he had to finish it first. I was willing to wait. 

The next summer, our last summer at the lake, our last summer with my grandfather alive, he presented the finished sunset painting to me. I was happy and then I was overwhelmed with gratitude when my grandmother pulled me aside and told me that my grandfather had worked each day to finish it for me...my grandfather who had to use a walker to get around, after falling the previous winter and breaking a hip, discovering the cancer in his bones. Each day he had carefully inched his way around the outside of the house to get to his basement studio, because he could no longer go down the stairs. It was an act of love that humbled me, and his determination to fulfill his promise made a strong impact on me...strong enough, in fact, that in my dreams, in fire after fire, that painting has never been harmed. 

When I couple that dream with the other fires I’ve dreamt about, two fires that actually happened within hours of my dreaming them, I feel convinced some people really do have the power to know things. And when my masseuse acknowledged my deep fear, and I envisioned what I am most afraid of, I was certain she and I were looking at the same image.

Early this morning I woke up in the middle of a seemingly endless dream. I was dressed and ready for my wedding re-do. Sam and I have talked a few times about someday doing our wedding over again--either renewing our vows or just celebrating an anniversary with the kind of big, relaxed, outdoor party we probably should have had in the first place. Our actual wedding was the event I thought I was supposed to have. It was one for which I was ill-suited. I bought my wedding dress online, tried it on on the back porch of our under-construction house, on the decking I installed so I could see my reflection in the glass door. I did not (and do not) own a full length mirror. I forced my friends to dance with us for our first dance because I was too gripped with anxiety to dance alone in front of everyone. When we cut our cake, we did it surreptitiously, when few people were watching. I was so afraid of being bad at being a bride that I was.

When we have our re-do, we’ll be at our house with family and friends spilling out onto the porch and the grass. If we’re lucky, we’ll have a band playing and everyone will dance. We’ll bbq, or roast a pig as Sam wants to do, and we’ll drink local beer in plastic cups. There will be dogs and kids running around. I might wear a skirt, but I might just wear shorts. And I will kiss Sam openly and often, and I will tell him again, in front of everyone there, why I love him so much and all the ways I re-promise to try to honor him and our relationship. In my dream this morning, the stage was set for this type of event, but we couldn’t start because my mother hadn’t arrived yet. I kept circling around, through rooms and people, looking for her. I knew she would arrive soon; I insisted we wait just another few minutes. Everyone in my dream was waiting, glancing at doors, out windows, scanning the room full of faces. I could picture her nearby, dressed and ready to celebrate, and smiling, so I never gave up waiting, until I woke up and then I realized, of course: she’s not coming...she wasn’t there the first time and she won’t be there when we do it again.

I find myself, often, circling around in the current created by the joint force of my mother’s absence and my daughter’s presence. The energy present in my daughter’s life swirls effortlessly into the empty spaces left behind the hard fact of my mother’s death. She fills the void.

Recently Quinn told me, “Mom, you’re my best mom ever.” “Thanks,” I told her, “but I’m your only mom.” Quinn’s face took on a look of concerned sincerity, “Oh no, Mom,” she told me, with an uncanny smile, “I had hundreds of moms before you, but then I came to you as your baby, and I’ve decided, since then, that you are my best mom ever.” I don’t know what Quinn knows about reincarnation, but sometimes the things she says have an eery quality that strike me as possibly true.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day… 

"Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” 

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. 

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” 

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?” 

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept…”*

Traveling through each day with Quinn is an immeasurable joy. Perhaps it is unnecessary to say, at this point, that the passing of these days is also the deep fear I carry with me as I watch her grow. Each day passed is a day that cannot be relived; each life is made of a finite number of days. A void that is filled is still a void. 

I want Quinn to live a full and free life, and while she does I’ll keep working to capture the immense and magical beauty of her in some way I can hold onto, until I become Real enough to stand back and be glad simply that she has been here with me at all. 

The last thing my masseuse told me was that I should dance more. It seems like a good goal to have.



*from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

An Incredible Journey

It’s proving to be a pattern that, at this time in the year, I have a hard time finding time to write. In fact, I have a hard time finding things to write about. January and February are always extraordinarily busy at school. They are cold months. We run from one chore to the next. We don’t have a ton of fun and there’s little time to reflect. These factors combine to put us all on edge and, when Quinn’s on edge, the edge gets edgier. There’s usually not much that I want to preserve. For these reasons, this year, I planned ahead. 

In November, when I was anticipating the hectic pace and extreme cold weather of January and early February, I asked Dave, my boss and our school’s headmaster, if I could go with him, and this year’s group of students, on his annual trip to Austria.

Before I begin this story, I have to offer a confession: The fact that I was able to go on this trip is thanks, in large part, to Sam’s generosity of spirit. It meant a lot more work for him to have me be away. He sent me off with encouragement and not a trace of bitterness or detectable jealousy; his magnanimity always makes me feel petty. I would have encouraged him to go too, but inevitably I would have let him know just how generous I was being in doing so. I hate this about me, but that’s a different story. In this story, I am just grateful to Sam, for taking care of Quinn by himself, while also taking care of heating the house, plowing the road, teaching his classes and even teaching some of mine. I thought it would all be relatively manageable as long as there were no big storms and Quinn didn’t get sick. Four days after I left, I checked my school email and saw Sam’s plea to all the teachers for help...they were getting a ton of snow, Quinn’s school was closed, and she had a fever. A worst case scenario--and all he got out of it was a new hat and a chocolate bar.

The other part of this confession is that in the past, I have complained about January and February, but in the context of this journey, in all its stages, any former complaints seem absurd. When I was in Germany, standing in the parking lot of the Dachau Concentration Camp, Dave said this to our group: “One thing I’ve learned from coming here is that none of us has ever had a bad day. Ever. Period.” I’ve seen my boss have what I thought were bad days now and then and, for my own part, I certainly would have said I had had some bad days. But of course, even the very worst days of my life have not been bad in comparison. What I experienced there, at Dachau, and on the other days of my week-long trip, and what I’ve experienced as a result of that trip (which is far and away the best part of this story)...these are things I hope to preserve.

First: my small portion of the story. The trip was technically my “work.” I flew to Munich a week after Dave and his group went over to begin their two to three weeks of ski training. There were twelve girls, nine of which are ninth graders in my English class. My job was to show up and provide some academic support, so the students would keep making progress on their school work, in spite of not being in their classes. When they weren’t skiing, we had study halls and English class, did group projects, took quizzes and tests, wrote papers, attempted research, etc, etc. And when we weren’t skiing or doing homework, we got to be tourists, with the local knowledge of our two guides--our headmaster,  whose wife Traudl (whom I am also privileged to know) is a German ski racing hero (a two-time German Olympian and five-time member of Germany’s World Championship team). Dave's in-laws still live in a small village in Schleching in the Bavarian Alps, and he is encyclopedic in his knowledge of the area. We also had Mike, our school’s European Training Coordinator, an Austrian ski coach, who acts as host and local coach for our groups when they go over. Needless to say, the “work” portion of my time in Austria and Germany seemed like a very, very small price to pay for all the fun I had.

On my first full day, two of the girls were in need of a rest from training, so they stayed home, resting in the school’s house in Kossen, and I stayed with them, settling in to the very lovely apartment I had just across the street. I made a pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table grading papers and enjoying the quiet. And I took a lot of pictures out various windows in the house.

On my second full day, some of the girls were going to race at Kitzbuhel (home of ski racing’s famous Hahnenkamm). Because Dave was short on bodies, and in spite of my very mediocre skiing ability, he told me I would be the girls’ “start coach” that day. Fortunately my only job was to hold the radio so Mike, the real coach, could communicate with them from the course; that and be sure they made it to the start on time. When I arrived at the top of the course, the girls left to take their warm up runs, and I mostly took pictures--dozens of pictures of the same view because I just couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. 

After the race, we had a couple of hours to free ski. The sun was out, the sky was blue and my new skis made me feel like I actually knew what I was doing. I skied open faces of knee-deep powder and then hopped over to gorgeous groomed trails. And when I got to the bottom, I hopped onto a heated chairlift and rode back to the top, marveling over the interminable sea of peaks in every direction--the Alps are the most spectacular mountains I’ve ever seen. I smiled all day; it was outrageously fun. 

The next day, the girls trained at a tiny ski hill called Hinterreit--a deceiving little place with just two t-bars and two trails. The upper one is fairly steep and, from what I learned, the farmer who owns the hill is a master with his machinery and the maintenance of the trails; he knows and can create exactly the conditions racers need for training. He is so good that national teams from across Europe train there. In the two days we were on the hill, we saw national teams from Austria, Sweden, Norway and Finland. And while all the racers trained higher up, I did laps on the lower t-bar, alternating powder runs with groomer runs, working on my turns and listening to music in my new helmet. Again, I smiled all day.

Whenever we got in the vans to drive somewhere, I sat in the front with either Dave or Mike; both were generous tour guides, pointing out landmarks and the best places to hike and climb and bike in the summer. Dave is particularly good about sharing the history. Driving to Hinterreit one day, he pointed to the top of a group of peaks to our left, and told me about the Berchtesgaden, and Hitler’s mountain hideaway, the Eagle’s Nest, which is now a tourist site. The landscape is as stunning as the history is hard to fathom. 

Everything we saw had a sort of fantastical quality. For dinner one night we visited a tiny restaurant on a Bavarian hilltop, in a building that is about 700 years old, with low ceilings and thick walls. There were no menus brought to us, just delicious plates of wiener schnitzel, with berry jam and fried potatoes, and cold German beer. After dinner, the chef gave us the key to the even older church a little farther up the hill. We hiked up, let ourselves in and turned on the lights to look around. Hiking back down, through dark woods, we passed below where an ancient castle used to stand. 

We spent a snowy rest day at Dave & Traudl’s house, doing school work and eating homemade cakes, warmed by the kachelofen, looking out at the snow. When the snow stopped the next day, we traveled to Steinplatte, a ski area that is seemingly on top of the world. The girls took off to ski and Mike skied with me for a while to get me oriented (an unnecessary kindness I was grateful for!). At the top of the highest lift, he pointed in one direction and then another: “That’s Italy. That’s Germany. This is Austria. Let’s go!” On another afternoon, we went up to a hilltop lodge for apfelstrudel and coffee and then rode sleds all the way back down. Everywhere, I took pictures and imagined visiting again someday with Sam and Quinn, determined to learn some German between now and then.

It was on one of our last days that we made the two hour drive from Kossen back toward Munich, into the city of Dachau. Visiting the concentration camp is part of this trip each year. A somber contrast to the blue skies and joyful skiing, but a stop that is a responsibility.

The visit to Dachau was difficult, as it is meant to be. Walking through the memorial site was heartbreaking and uncomfortable, knowing I was walking through spaces where nearly 200,000 prisoners walked before me, and an unknowable number, in the tens of thousands, were murdered. Seeing the ovens in the crematorium was an experience for which I have no adequate words. For most of my time at Dachau, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was impossible for me to deny a heavy presence that weighted the air.

When we reconnected with Mike, after a nearly-silent two hour drive, he said only this: “I don’t need to ask you how it went today. I know how it was. There’s nothing more we can say.” He was right; even now, I am not sure what to say. When I got home to Vermont, I started reading Peter Matthiessen's last book, In Paradise. Within thirty pages, I found this passage which allowed me to stop trying to articulate the unspeakable.

“Fresh insight into the horror of the camps is inconceivable, and efforts at interpretation by anyone lacking direct personal experience an impertinence, out of the question; in the words of the survivor-writer Aharon Appelfeld, ‘The Holocaust belongs to the type of enormous experience that reduces one to silence. Any utterance, any statement, any ‘answer’ is tiny, meaningless, and occasionally ridiculous.’” 

I do not have direct personal experience, obviously, and this brings me, finally, to Part II: the truly incredible part of my journey, which was not my journey at all.

Two days after visiting Dachau, I flew home. When I arrived in Boston, I drove to my dad’s for the night and, in the morning, Louise read part of an email which contained a brief message for me: 

“Tell Kerry that at the end of WWII, I was stationed at the Chiemsee, thirty-five miles north of Salzburg (King Ludwig Castle) area. Also spent some time visiting Hitler's hide away (The Eagle’s Nest) in the outskirts of Salzburg (Berchtesgaden) on top of Bavarian Alps. Memories.” 

It was a message from my Uncle Du, a person I have loved dearly my whole life, but about whose life, I realized suddenly, I knew very little. I thought back guiltily to the advice of my high school history teacher, Dr. Hanna: “Talk to people from the older generations. Don’t miss your chance to ask them their stories.”

At 89 years old, my uncle manages to stay young in a hundred ways. One of which is his presence on Facebook, where he saw some of my photos posted from Austria, and that is what prompted his message to me. I wrote to him as soon as I got home to Vermont.

Uncle Du,
Louise shared your story with me about the end of WWII! I never knew this--how fascinating! What an incredible time to be there. I drove right by the Eagle's Nest (from down below) and the headmaster (whom I was traveling with) pointed it out and told me about it. Now it is a tourist site; what was it like when you were there? Did you have to go in to any of the concentration camps? We visited Dachau and it was very difficult for all of us. I would love to hear more about your experience!

Over the course of the few weeks since my return, my uncle and I have exchanged a number of emails. Each of his attempts to answer my questions has sparked new questions. What follows is his story. I’ve combined his separate emails into one blended narrative, but only by copying and pasting; the words that follow are entirely his own, and I share them here with his gracious permission: "Simply pass along to anyone who may be interested."

Hi Kerry: 

Got your note on your trip to Austria and the brief on "The Eagles Nest." That was a long time ago but every once in a while, my memory brings me back to certain times and things that were a part of WWII. I was 18 years old and all healthy kids went into the service. It was 6 months between the draft, basic training and boarding the old Queen Mary to Scotland, overnight (by train), tea and crumpets (gifts of the British Red Cross), load the boats, cross the English Channel into Le Havre, France.  We did the usual organizing and were ordered to our new assignments that included replacing troops that needed fresh energies and we followed orders. 

I have forgotten the name of the northern French town, Charleville (I think) but we were lined up and were given our orders, by the numbers in a row. At a particular number, for example 1-70, they went to the 90th infantry division. Then 71-140 went to the 94th infantry division. A friend of mine was at the split, he went to the 94th and it was most difficult for him in a lot of ways; we had gone to school and experienced all the things that build friendships. In any case, we were given our weapons, cleaned them free of preservative and assigned to the 359th Infantry Battalion and given our march orders.  

We were infantrymen for about three weeks, when the 345th Field Artillery Battalion got wiped out and they took a certain number of us and made us artillery men, manning the old 155 mm Howitzers and given march orders. We were involved in two major campaigns, Central Europe and Rhineland Valley. There were many skirmishes; we crossed the Mosel and Rhine Rivers a couple of times; we chased, they chased, and all the stuff that went with it. One situation was a German 109 fighter plane would make an every night midnight bed check on us and strafe our positions. One of my buddies,  "Rowdy Valdez,” manned a 50 caliber machine gun and shot the German pilot down. He got a battlefield commission for that action. 

We were kind of raunchy then. Snow, cold water (from the brooks) to wash with (if we washed) etc., but the dirt helped keep us warm in the sleeping bag. Not too nice, but we did it and God saw us through. 

We wound up in Prague, Czechoslovakia where we engaged a last ditch German effort to try and save the Sudetenland. We also did some holding action, keeping the Russians back until the Allies could settle the question "who is going to get Berlin?” We know how that wound up. 

Because of the number of troops and the companies (within the battalions), each outfit has its own history; what I give you is a piece of ours and what I remember.

I hadn't seen this firing order list for a long time.  What it meant was each man had a job to do. As I recall: We had stacks of pointed 155mm heads (loaded with explosives). Then we had stacks of sugar bag ammo powder--it looked like the old cloth sugar bags--6-8 bags, bumper to bumper in a single sleeve. One man would load the head, another would slam home that head as far as it would go to seat in the chamber. The next guy would load the powder, another man would slam that home, with a long Ram Rod Pole. Another would close the chamber, another would get the direction of firing (from the forward observer), another would shift the direction, up or down, left or right. The commander would give the firing command, another would pull the lanyard (the rope that actually fired the weapon on his pull). As soon as this was done, on each round firing, every man did it over again. Every man knew every job to fill in at all times. Position for lifting, placing, slamming home, pulling the trigger (the lanyard). Turning away from the firing, flashbacks, etc. was very important.  As I recall there were four guns in a section and, on occasion, we would get a “time on target” order, where each gun would fire, one immediately following the previous gun, and that continued on to all for as long as the order was on. When you’re young and given an order, you just follow that order and only think about giving more than you get, but war is hard on all involved. 

In our march to Prague we were part of the troops that freed about 2000 prisoners (in bad shape; very emaciated) out of some camp. I have forgotten the name of the camp. We saw some of what you witnessed [at Dachau], but our visit was to open the gates, get everyone out and then we were on our way. There were a lot of prisoners in very bad shape, running wild out of the gates, just to get out, not knowing where, just going. We didn't hang around long because we were on the way to Prague on a march order. I am most thankful that my service was limited to other areas. The thought of all those humans being destroyed by other humans is incomprehensible. There is no question that their spirits roam those rooms you saw. 

The battles continued beyond the official ending date of the war because no one knew what was going on. I was assigned to a hospital in Wurtzburg, Germany and then to the 112th EVAC hospital. I ran a storage supply warehouse there, at the Chiemsee location.    (This facility jutted out into the Chiemsee, about 35 miles north of Salzburg with King Ludwig's, The Gold Castle. It was from this supply location that I was privileged to visit the original "Eagles Nest”...Hitler's quarters, his headquarter meeting rooms, secret hideouts, and place of other supposed action plans.)

On one side of the warehouse was Medical Supply for the 112th EVAC hospital, and the other side was general supplies, bedding, clothing, etc. I also recall that I became quite close to a group of rehabilitated German prisoners in my charge that helped in the supply warehouse. There were two Germans that helped in organizing the supplies and helped the villagers’ re-habilitation. Hans Kaltow (I called him Walter) and Hans Schneidermeister (master tailor). I don't know whether that was his name or vocation, but he and his wife and son were skiers and mountain climbers. Both of these men were German soldiers that were part of a rehab project to help and they helped. It proves there are good people everywhere. 

I got to be very close to several guys from basic training and we were fortunate to be (for the most part) close enough to meet on occasion [after the war]. I was best man for a buddy, who lived in Newton in 1947-48. (I had my brand new 1930 Model A Ford, that I had the courage to drive my mother and I to the wedding in. That was a nice car and one that Auntie and I dated in--no heat). They were good guys. They wrote me over the years, but time takes its toll. These are great memories. 

I never did get back to Germany for a visit but other than the bad things of war, Germany (Bavaria) is truly a nice area. I got to meet some good people and am fortunate enough to have the memories (way, way back) as part of history. It is just some of what I remember, from a long time ago.  

I was proud to be of service, doing what little I did to help. I didn't have to go through the actual "D Day" invasion (June 6th), so I lucked out on that score. I will say the pressure was on and we had our sufficient amount of action with minimum losses. In the march orders, we went through Munich and the Dachau area and all the bombed out churches and other areas. And your visit to Dachau will live in your memory to share with the future generations. 

Your Auntie Francie and I met shortly after I came back from Germany. Your dad was only a baby, 6-7 months old. That develops into a love story that I will share with you later (some parts edited). 

This review (like the rest of life) is how we build memories that are everlasting gifts. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to remember. 

Special Love and Prayers to all of you, always.
Uncle Du and Auntie too

My uncle has long been the patriarch of our family. He is a joyful, fun-loving man who, from the time my sister and I were quite small, insisted that any boy who was interested in us would have to go and talk to him first. He has a broad, toothy grin and a full body laugh. He pulls you close to tell you the important rules of life, “take good care of your mom and dad," “watch out for your baby sister," “Tell Miss Quinn Uncle Du loves her, okay?” In all the years I’ve been alive, I’ve known my uncle to be this way: joyful, loving, happy, devoted. I have never known this story of his part in some of the world’s most important history. It turns out, many of us in our family didn’t.

In these past few weeks, in any spare time I’ve had, I’ve been scouring the internet and collecting the names of books I now want to read, trying to see what more I can learn about the events my uncle has told me about, in his firsthand account. I’ve found many sites telling the story of the liberation of the Flossenburg Concentration Camp by the 90^th Infantry Battalion on their way to Prague; after prompting my uncle with this name, he told me that “Flossenburg rings a bell." On the United States Army’s website, I read this:

“At approximately 10:30 hours on April 23, 1945, the first U.S. troops of the 90th Infantry Division arrived at Flossenburg KZ,. They were horrified at the sight of some 2,000 weak and extremely ill prisoners remaining in the camp and of the SS still forcibly evacuating those fit to endure the trek south. Elements of the 90th Division spotted those ragged columns of prisoners and their SS guards...” 

I also found a narrative account of the “Rhine Crossing to Czechoslovakia,” in which I found my uncle’s name, in the Firing Battery, 1^st Section: Pfc. Costabile L. Cipullo, Mass. And A History of the 90^th Division in WWII, which I intend to read as soon as my uncle’s email remembrances stop showing up in my inbox--which I sincerely hope will not be soon.

Uncle Du, thank you for sharing your incredible story with me. I love and admire you, now as always. xo -Kerry