Little Girl Found

In 1963, an unusually harsh winter descended on the Rhine Valley. Even the ancient castles, perched on the steep slopes of vineyards, wore a mantle of snow. The river meandered through the valley like a silver ribbon. The calm, shallow water near the banks had formed a smooth surface of ice where townspeople skated, sometimes all the way to small islands. Farther out from the valley, the river grew wide and deep and had rocks and cliffs along the banks, especially around certain bends. To travel these sections, you needed Lotsen (river guides), who came on little boats to guide the ships through the difficult currents. That winter, the river was choked with churning ice floes. Traffic on the Rhine had almost ground to a halt. The only boats still braving the waters were the ferries transporting people to work and the freighters carrying coal, oil, and food. Pleasure boats were docked for the season. In November, I had turned three years old. My mother, Anneliese; my father, Hans-Hermann; four-year-old Jörgi; and I lived in a two-bedroom apartment in the city of Worms. Our small kitchen, where my mother spent most of her time, was my world. In the center was a white table with four chairs. Our coal oven and stove had a black pipe that snaked upward and disappeared into the wall. When my mother opened the little door to poke the oven with an iron poker, the fire crackled. A cupboard filled with china, silverware, baking supplies, and other staples stood against the opposite wall. Morning light poured into the kitchen through a glass door that led to a small balcony with window boxes. Mutti filled them with pansies in the spring and geraniums in the summer. Now the boxes were covered in snow. During this winter, I developed a dry, hollow bark of a cough. To comfort me, Mutti would give me warm milk over zwieback toast, sprinkled with sugar. To distract me, she would tell me stories about growing up in West Prussia. “When your Mutti was a little girl and we still lived on our farm, my Oma [grandmother] would put a coin next to the stove. Once it was hot, we pressed it against the icy kitchen window. Then a hole appeared, and we could look through it to peek into the winter garden,” she told me one day. She sighed a little, sat down next to me at the table, and poured herself a cup of coffee. “I loved visiting our neighbors on a big sleigh that was pulled by our horses. We would race through snowy pine forests. I sat between my mama and papa, wrapped in fur blankets.” How much I would have loved to be there. I could practically see the horses galloping and feel the warm blanket on my lap. “But then the war came and everything changed.” Mutti’s eyes turned misty. She looked out the window—far into the distance and back into the past. My little heart was heavy. I felt her happiness, her grief, and her melancholy, as if these feelings were mine. I climbed onto my mother’s lap, pressed my cheeks against hers, draped my arms around her neck, and hugged her tightly. I wanted to comfort her with my child’s love. That I had already been overburdened as a three-year-old, I only discovered later. A whole generation—the offspring of World War II children—suffered from the effects of their parents’ war trauma. My mother was slim and still very young, only twenty-eight years old, and had survived terrible events. She dyed her hair black to hide early streaks of gray. Her features were soft, and the only makeup she wore was red lipstick on special occasions. That was how my father liked it. I would sit on her lap, and she would untangle my thick blonde hair with a small brush, part my hair on the right, and pull it back with a red plastic clip. But as soon as I got up and ran around, strands of hair would sweep over my clear blue eyes. My brother, a slender boy with wavy dark-blond hair, was only thirteen months older than me. He had the soft hazel eyes of the does in our picture book. He was already very smart and sometimes a little precocious, amusing the adults… That winter, clumps of snow were piled on the swings and sandbox, and a sheet of ice glistened on the tall yellow slide. I loved the Pilz (mushroom), a giant metal mushroom with a red hat and white dots. Though icicles hung from its cap in winter, I remember warmer days when Vati or Mutti would lift me up to a bar from which I could dangle and spin, my legs flying. One day Vati took Jörgi and me sledding nearby. Jörgi would always run ahead to be first to reach the top of our favorite hill. This day was no different. At the top of the hill, Vati gave the two of us a good push, and our sled flew down the steep hill. We laughed and squealed after Jörgi managed a perfect stop at the bottom. But all was not well. Despite my warm mittens, my hands always got cold. Eventually I coughed, a deep, raspy sound coming from my throat. Vati pulled me back along the snow-covered street on the sled as Jörgi trudged behind us, complaining, “Why do we have to go home so soon?” Another time, when I was sick again, Mutti sat on my bedside, covered me with a heavy down comforter, stroked my hot cheeks, and told me what her mother and grandmother had told her during the war when they’d had to flee their home. “Like each little child, Kerstin, you too have a Schutzengel [guardian angel], who will always watch over you,” she said. Then we sang a little song and prayed before I drifted off to a fitful sleep.