THE STORY OF A KEY

Besides the fact that I misplace keys often and loose a lot of time because I have to search where they could be, another story suddenly came into my mind concerning a key

I was probably 5 or 6 years old and lived with my parents in a little town near Frankfurt together with my father's mother, my grandma, the grandpa, his sister with husband and my two cousins, and an uncle who had just came home from a war prisoner camp in Siberia where he had been a prisoner from 15 years old til 25 exactly 10 years. They all lived with my grandparents because they had all  lost their homes due to the heavy bombing of Frankfurt. I didn't know  that my parents had lived in Frankfurt in an apartment which was completely bombed out and had disappeared when my father came home from work. My mother was with me, a baby, on the countryside staying with her parents.

My aunt and uncle had the same destiny, their home was also completely destroyed and they also had lost everything. Fortunately the house was very spacious but apparently all the adults living together was not so ideal. We children didn't realise, my cousins were one year younger then me and the other a year older we avoided as much as we could the adults, because there were often fights.

My aunt was a very kind person (to me) but apparently a devil to the adults, she got hysterical attacks, screamed, slammed doors, ran away, came back etc. I personally didn't care, my mother tried to protect me by hiding these facts as much as possible, but that wasn't easy living all so close together. Anyway I didn't understand why my aunt behaved that strange and wasn't afraid either, I think it seemed normal to me.

One day she really got completely crazy, screamed and ran around and then into the kitchen slammed the door behind her and locked the door with the key opened the window and threw out the key. After a while we heard her hammering at the door because she wanted to get out, and called my uncle who tried to calm her down. We children watched from far wondering what would happen now and how she would get out.

My grandma saw us standing there and send us in the garden to look for the key. We did this with great pleasure and were looking for the key everywhere. It reminded us a bit like looking for Easter eggs. We were very eager to find the key so that my aunt could get out because she was still hammering at the door. My father shouted that she should jump out of the window, which was not possible because it was far too high, but he was so furious.

We checked every centimetre of the front yard and finally my little cousin found the key under a fir close to the trunk. She picked it up and showed it proudly to everybody. My uncle grabbed it out of her little hands, stormed into the house and opened the kitchen door. My aunt fell sobbing in his arms and the rest I don't remember.

Only years later I understood how terrible it must have been for them to all live together after the trauma of the war. They had lost everything, just like my parents not even a plate or a fork was left. My aunt suffered from  terrible panic attacks,  because she had been standing in the street where a few meters farer a bomb went down. For days she couldn't hear anything.

When I remember this time fortunately not too much, I get an oppresssed feeling. As a child I felt that there was something wrong without knowing what it was. It was a life full of fear for the adults, the daily fight for food, the American occupation, the fear that they would break into the house when completely drunken and looking for girls.

This key under the fir, in the little hand of my cousin I will certainly never forget.



My two cousins and I (right)


Linking to Linda G. Hills SOCS-key

THE REMOVABLE EYE

more participants at Jenny Matlock's Alphabet Thursday
 

When I was a little girl of about 10 in 1953,   I was invited by a friend to stay over night in her home, what little girls always love to do. During the night I had to go to the bathroom. I switched on the light and the first thing I saw was an eye laying in a glass filled with water and starring at me. After the first shock I approached and took a closer look. It was of a grey blue. Of course I had never seen an eye alone in a glass but only in faces. I wondered if I could take out my eye too, but that didn't work. It was a fake eye made of glass. The eye made me more and more curious and I decided to take it out to have a closer look.



It was round like a marble and on the other side completely white. I found it funny. I took the eye and put it besides mine just to compare. Besides my brown green eye I had now a blue one. Then I put the eye between mine and the mirror showed me that I looked like a monster of the greek mythology. I rolled the eye in my hands and let it drop from one hand the other. I liked this eye it seemed to smile at me.

Finally I had enough played with the eye and put it back in the glass and returned to my bed. The next morning when I went to the bathroom the eye had disappeared. At the breakfast table I looked at my friends dad's eyes, yes it was exactly the same color ! It must be his ! But how did he put it in his face ? That was a mistery to me. I had tried to wear the eye but it hadn't worked ! I must have starred at the poor man because suddenly he asked me if I had seen his eye in the bathroom. I was quite embarrassed but said yes and then he told me that it was a prosthesis because he had lost one eye during WW II (and not only that, but also part of an arm and all fingers on the other hand).

As at this time there were so many men with something missing like an arm a leg or both I found that completely normal. I found it even funny, that my friend's Dad could take his out, that was really special ! The fact that he couldn't see with this eye, came never into my mind.  My father had his two eyes and he couldn't take them out. I was almost jalous.

THE VASE

more participants at Jenny Matlock's Alphabet Thursday

letter V

Looking in my cupboard for a vase, I found a very old one which I had almost forgotten and which I never use because of its history. I was born in Frankfurt Germany in the middle of WW II in 1943. My mother could move to her parents in the country, because she had a baby. Mothers with children were allowed to leave the severely bombed city, the others had to stay and work.

My father was still working in Frankfurt and lived alone in their appartment. One evening when he came home the street didn't exist anymore the whole district had been bombed and was in ruins. He went there where their flat was supposed to be and amongst all the rubble found only one thing which had survived the bombing without any damage :



this vase

All other things were distroyed and nothing left. He took out the vase and left Frankfurt too. The allied airforces had dropped 12.197 tons of explosives on the city and about 5.500 residents were killed.

I am not a person to keep old things as souvenir, I rather throw them away too quickly sometimes, but this vase I couldn't throw away when my parents had both died it's part of history and it is so amazing that it still looks like new !