![]() He met her on a dating website, that kind where there are no profile pictures and everyone is a mystery. He had moved to Phoenix, Arizona to get away from the yellow buses and black-framed portraits. Hairs flew into her face like flies but she didn’t push them away. Her hair was tied in a bun when I met her. She wasn’t pretty and would smile all the time like it was her default setting. She worked for the government and was also German, but only distantly. Her name was Apryl and she was skinny like the twigs on the spring forest floor. That same year that I found out, when I was nine, my uncle found another woman. Erbsenzähler | noun | (German) ‘Someone who is obsessed with details and a bit of a control freak.’ ![]() Happiness for her was scarce but we didn’t care.ģ. Katharine would smile, wiping her hands on her apron, and we’d know she wasn’t happy. My uncle would sway on the rocking chair out on the porch, teasing me about how much I cried when I was a baby. They had to sell it during the divorce and I kept imagining it with a garden and a chicken coop by the front door. I think about what their house would be like all the time. I didn’t understand at the time but I do now. Katharine wanted a break and my uncle wouldn’t take one. I whispered to my siblings and held their baby-soft hands. What really happened was told to me when I was nine. She was worried for her brother and his first heartache. My mother ran her hands along her dress and shouted to the trees about her worries. “Your aunt and uncle-they’re splitting up.” I was five then. ![]() The dahlia flowers couldn’t bloom soon enough.ĭahlia flowers and their delicate little petals were what I thought about when my mother broke the news to me. I let out a breath and thought about my grandmother and her predictions. They said I could visit someday when the dahlia flowers bloomed. I never visited this place but they told me about it and kissed my cheeks. One in a nice neighborhood with neighbors that would bring over pie and talk about the paintings on their shaken walls. A small one where they could bathe in the sunlight and laugh and drink healthy smoothies. Fernweh | noun | (German) ‘The feeling of homesickness for a place you’ve never been to.’ She knew the ways of the world and where the sun would set and the direction of his little apartment in the big city. The conversation was at Thanksgiving dinner and Katharine could be listening. He said I’d have a new cousin from them in a year. Somebody in my family, my father perhaps, had a bet with my grandmother. She had dimples and that’s what I remember. She’d touch my hair and tuck it behind my ears in a motherly way, laughing when the wisps flew into her face. Now I was only three and there are things I forgot, but what I do remember is my dress. She chose me and my older cousin to be the flower girl and ring bearer, giving us a basket full of creamy white rose petals and two silver rings with the instruction not to lose them. ![]() Coming from a long line of Germans, she could be sweet and sugary or tight-lipped and harsh. Her name was Katharine and she had golden threads for hair and a voice like the tinkling notes of a piano. My uncle married a woman when I was three. Backpfeifengesicht | noun | (German) ‘A face that begs to be slapped.’
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