craftygal stump - Personal Archaeology: Travels in Germany

Town of Buedingen

Town of Trier

Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier

Artifacts

by Jan

All my life, I’ve dreamed of going back to the town where I spent the first year of my life. It felt as though there was some mystery to be solved; as if some clues about what makes me who I am might be scattered about the small town in Germany where my parents lived all those years ago. So, thirty-some years after we left, I returned with my father, in hopes that I might find some illumination.

I don’t think many folks really understood my desire to make this trip. Some laughingly asked if I had on my itinerary a visit to the hospital where I first entered the world. Even my father seemed more interested in other sights than the tiny town we once called home. Perhaps I didn’t really understand what I was looking for either. Maybe I had been sold a MasterCard commercial fantasy: plane tickets to Germany -- $900, rental car with automatic transmission -- $800, finally understanding where you came from -- priceless.

Maybe I had been sold a MasterCard commercial fantasy: plane tickets to Germany -- $900, rental car with automatic transmission -- $800, finally understanding where you came from -- priceless.

In retrospect, I realize that I wanted to feel the current of German life and to see places that I had once been but now had no recollection of. But more than that, I wanted to know what had brought my parents together in the first place, what had led my anti-war father to volunteer for the Army, and what had inspired them to create a child.

My parents divorced when I was in college. Somehow, in the chaos of growing up, I never really got around to asking about the details of their courtship or the creation of our family. My brothers and I knew the basic details: our parents met at a library picnic to which they had each brought a guitar. They married. My father joined the army and was shipped off to Germany. My mother followed him over some time later, and eventually I appeared on the scene, joined by brothers three and seven years later. I guess I thought that the details surrounding my creation lay somewhere in the German countryside.

So, off we went, my father and I. We reached that small town, and spent a day walking its streets. I tried to begin unraveling the mysteries of my past by pressing my father for details, but it ended up feeling awkward. How could I know so little about the man who brought me into this world? And, with over thirty years of history passed, how could I even hope to glimpse that long-ago reality? We left the little town and my many unasked questions behind.

We visited friends in another part of Germany. They were generous and kind beyond imagination, giving me the taste of German life that I had been seeking. They showed us the town where their family history stretched back through the centuries.

We visited museums full of crafts from the past; coins, jewelry, carvings, statues, and case upon case of amazing embroidery. Priestly garments stitched with detailed depictions of Christ’s suffering or floral patterns that would seem to have taken a lifetime of devoted needlework. Rooms filled with evidence of some ancient person’s existence that has lasted long beyond knowledge of their personal details. Everywhere we looked, there was evidence of the past. So much to see that it grew overwhelming.

We left Germany and flew home, exhausted. Perhaps we hadn’t become closer in the ways I had imagined, but sharing our travels had brought us together in other ways. We had stories to tell about my nervous backseat driving on the autobahn and my father’s foiled attempt to smuggle a tai chi sword onboard the plane home in his carry on luggage. We had new, shared history.

Upon reflection, I do feel as though I found some clues; some traces of that missing year of my life. And I realize now that, as with many creative endeavors, the product outlives the circumstances of its creation; only offering hints at its creator’s long-ago inspiration.