My German Life: Identity Crisis

When I was in college (the first time)it was quite fashionable to randomly drop out of school and strike out on one's own "to find oneself." I was recently flying alone and was seated next to a college student who had just spent 8 months "finding herself" while globe-trotting. Europe is usually the hot spot for American students and post-grads to find themselves, while Europeans favor India and southeast Asia.
I moved to Germany two weeks ago and realized that moving overseas really is the perfect place to "find" myself. One step off the airplane, and it was painfully clear who I was: an American. Before my move I had tried to prep myself on ways to avoid being the gauche touristy American. I practiced German phrases (my pronunciation was way off), armed myself with scarves, and coached my children on not being loud and offensive in public. My sister, who already resides in Europe, in the very chic city of Vienna, tried to warn me, "Kim, they will know you are American, you can't hide it."
I've always prided myself in being more fashionable than Mollie so I swore I would wear the right shoes and swath my neck in a scarf and wear my dark-rimmed glasses so I'd look more stern like a good German. Two days after arrival, my feet were blistered and swollen from my fashionable but uncomfortable shoes, and I gave up and started sporting my beloved flip-flops. I had more than one man eye my feet in disgust that day. Totally unmasked scorn. Over my shoes.
I felt fairly confident about my German until I actually had to go into a store and buy something. Interaction with the locals proved I was a total moron. I couldn't understand simple phrases, no matter how slowly they repeated them. My credit card only works half the time here, so I went looking for an ATM. I confidently walked into a bank, inserted my card in the machine and nothing happened. I kept trying but even when set to English, no money came out. I approached the teller, who politely informed me that was not an ATM, but a machine to give their customers account information. The geldtautomat was on the other side of the lobby. "Oh, ha-ha," I giggled, embarrassed, and got my money out of the right machine.
Making an ass out of myself is a daily routine. I have bought the wrong products at the apotheke (pharmacy), bought the incorrect ticket for the strassenbahn (streetcar), been unable to say "excuse me" when I ran into someone with my stroller. But this has been a great experience for me. I tend to come across a little overly self-confident, and this sort of routine pride-check has reminded me that Americans really are the most absurdly arrogant tourists in the world. I have met Germans who speak German, English and French. Latvians who speak Latvian, German and English. Swedes who speak Swedish, English and Norwegian. But Americans speak English, and only English, and living over here, I can tell you, that will only get you so far.
Germans are a very stern sort, and often feel the need to put you in your place. One day I was checking out at H&M, and I heard the clerk say to her co-worker, "auslander." I couldn't understand everything she said but that one word, and she repeated it several times. I wanted to shriek at her, "I'm not stupid! I know that auslander means foreigner!" Of course, she may have only been referring to my foreign credit card not working in her machine, but I was slightly offput nonetheless.
In spite of all of this, I love Germany. I love knowing who I am again: I'm just me, an American of average intelligence and not much style. For the first time in my life I'm somehow blessedly alright with this knowledge.
Europe is a lovely place, mysterious and aged. I am daily beguiled by the lovely gardens on my Kirschgartenstrasse (Cherry Garden Street) and by the Deutsch men and women gliding by on their bicycles. Each alley is a new adventure to be discovered. Germany is like a woman who appears a bit cold and curt at first, but her veneer is soon melted to reveal her true loveliness. Her mysteries haunt me. I am in love again :)

July on the Gulf

I caught sight of a head
bobbing in the whitecaps,
was drawn down the beach
to examine it, to ascertain
that it was not human.

I stared at black hair spread
and trailing over boiling waters
as you floated facedown.
I was mesmerized, rooted there
by the sick feeling in my stomach.

But I found my eyes were soon drawn
to other sights, the lights
of distant boats and the fabulous
towering flames eating an oil rig
and I wanted to burn up too.

I heard a small cry and turned;
my daughter was running, lost
in the dusk and crying for her mother.
I turned from you then, stopped lying
to myself that I care enough to save a stranger.

I'm human too, and no heroine.
I want to preserve my own flesh.
You were really only driftwood
or perhaps a seaweed-bearded buoy
anchored in the rolling filth.

To Dogma

O my Dogma,
How I miss you! nights
when the clock keeps me awake,
blinking through the shade of my lids.

Your embrace was so sure,
I thought it was for life.
You were the pins in my bones
holding me together, tight.

When I found myself,
simply a cold steel trap,
one by one I pulled the pins,
I loosed the jaws, unclapped the lips.

Now I rattle around,
a skeleton drunk
with a contented smile,
a gun called Apathy at my hip.

Miss May Grows Older

After Margaret Atwood's "Miss July Grows Older"

How much longer can I be this hot?

I hate men who call me "hot"
and mourn for a time when men cooed
to a woman, "You're lovely, beautiful,
radiant, gorgeous," or when they simply stopped,
stared, and were left speechless.

But back to the question at hand...
How much longer can this go on?
The moisturizer, foundation, concealer,
blush, lipstick, eyeliner, brow liner, mascara,
eye-shadow, tweezing here and there...

Not to mention the waxing, veeting, shaving,
lotioning, painting. And don't get me started
on the plasti-boobs. Only for special occasions,
I assure you. I do wonder who I am doing it for.
Don't get me wrong: I love the feel of putty,
Man-putty in my hands. But, O God, how I tire of it all.

When I was out on the ocean, riding my raft,
I had this moment, just a moment, mind you,
of peace. All the mascara had washed away,
my damp hair was matted to my head,
I lay there, free of underwires and spandex,

And I swear, it felt so good to not be "hot."

My Favorite Poems (ever evolving)

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER...
1. Seamus Heaney, "Punishment"
2. Elizabeth Bishop "One Art"
3. Gary Snyder "The Wild Edge"
4. Patrick Rosal, "On the First Meeting of Your Father & Your Mother on a Train in Australia"
5. Robert Hass, "Meditation on Lagunitas"
6. Adrienne Rich, "Diving Into the Wreck" & "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning"
7. Pablo Neruda, "The Fable of the Mermaids and the Drunks"
8. Sylvia Plath, "Fever 103degrees"
9. Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays"
10. Anne Sexton, "Her Kind"
11. Robert Lowell, "Dolphin"
12. Robert Duncan, "Passage Over Water"
13. May Swenson, "In Love Made Visible"
14. Kenneth Koch, "To Marina"

The Amateur Widow

There was a certain reverberating quality to the doorbell that morning. It had called to her from far away, and she swam slowly to the surface, taking deep breaths to reassure herself. She always left behind her dreams with relief and marveled at the sanity of conscious thought. Her dreams were always the same: dreams of lonely men, the lonely women they'd left behind, and the children who weren't yet aware of their loneliness.
The doorbell sounded again as she pulled on her white bathrobe. She staggered toward the door, glancing at the digital: 5:58 AM. Oh, my God. It hit her with a breath-strangling certainty. This is it. It's happening. To me. Nobody else would come this early in the morning.
The stairs felt strange; she'd heard of vertigo, but now she knew what people meant. Things were shifting, and she could see now, through the beveled-glass on the front door: men in uniform. Each step felt forced, long and exaggerated. She reached, fumbling, for the handle and cracked open the door, peering into morning darkness; the one with the cross over his name advanced...


As she passed her son's room she saw him sleeping through the cracked door, his blond hair tousled sweetly, pouty lips slack. She couldn't stop now, she had to keep moving. Movement meant something. She reached her bathroom with its large mirror-paneled walls; three sides, three ways to view one's self. She let the robe fall off her shoulders and surveyed her body. Her profile, her back, the 360 degrees the world viewed her in. She saw from the back view her imperfect thighs; she stared reproachfully at her stretch marks. She felt for the first time she was really seeing herself under this florescence. She'd spent so much time with her face pressed close to the mirror, examining microscopic flaws, applying mascara, tissueing mistakes. It occurred to her that she'd never seen the person he had loved. Had loved. Loved. No longer loved.


The two weeks he'd spent at home on leave seemed a distant memory. Instead of a second honeymoon in the Virgin Islands, they'd spent it trying to patch up all the little holes leaking air out of their marriage. They'd married young, were high school sweethearts and the harsher realities of life had taken awhile to set in. Marriage counseling with the battalion chaplain made her feel like an exposed organism in a petri dish. Under the microscope they had become the poster children for all that was wrong with Army life. They'd been given strategies for communication in their sessions but strategies seemed unequal to the task of long-distance communication. There had been blackouts, when she didn't hear from him for a week. She'd spent those days running up credit card bills at the mall, trying to forget her fears.
It seemed strange that she was thinking of herself at a time like this. She felt guilty for how much she'd thought about herself and how little she'd dwelled on his daily routines. But she was alive. Not dead.


The sound of gunfire fell, muted and distant on her ears. Crows scattered to the sky, strange and near. She pulled her black three-inch heels out of the sod again and tried to stand up straighter as the man with the flag approached. She knew how she should appear at this moment: there should be dignity in her bearing, pride shining through her tears. Instead she felt unsure of her appearance, intensely aware of the valium in her system, so ashamed of her need of it. There was the vague pressure of her mother's arm, and there was an awareness of how cold March felt. She thought how ugly Mount Pisgah cemetary was in early Spring; the sky grey and blank except for crows; the trees were bare and empty of brighter birds. The phrase "Sorry for your loss" kept striking her face cold as the wind as she received the mourners. Michael, the 38-year-old single cardiologist, hugged her familiarly and told her he was available if she needed anything at all. She felt her mother's approval and it turned over in her stomach. The skin on Michael's neck was already starting to sag and it bothered her to think what he would look like on the other side of 40. But she reminded herself that he represented money and security and things her son needed. She supposed it wasn't so bad to be 25 and attractive if one had to be a widow. Good thing he doesn't know how things look underneath the pantyhose.



Her lighter flamed and ate the end of her cigarette as she drew in a little too deeply. Oh, but it felt good: to hide away by the creek and flee the oppressive sentiments of her relatives. She smiled a little to herself as she thought about them all sharing macaroni and cheese, wheelhouse salad and KFC. She could just see her 93-year-old great-grandmother rocking in the corner, mumbling in her deranged fashion, "There's a lot of muddy water under that bridge...whole lotta muddy water." Great-Grandma always spat out "muddy" like it was a bitter secret. It had almost frightened her when Grandma turned and gazed at her and repeated those words, "Whole lotta muddy water." She felt the bitterness biting into her own spirit.
She stared down under the small footbridge into the creek water, reflecting the old light of stars. She drew in clarity as she relaxed with her cigarette. The house had made her feel anxious, claustrophobic with people eyeing her; she could feel them wondering about her future. She lit a second cigarette and thought how her throat would hurt the next day if she kept on going. But she would not deny herself these small pleasures any longer.
She cocked her head to the side, and viewed the planks, 13 of them, from a horizontal angle. Things were shifting again, coming into focus now. The dead grass on the banks of the creek was long and unmowed. She reached for a clump and lit it, watched it flame up and felt it embrace her face with its momentary warmth. She grabbed more grass and lit it.
She built up a small tepee of fire on the rotting planks, and gazed with satisfaction as the flames burned tall and mesmerizing. She reached into her ski jacket and removed the lump next to her heart. She gazed at the stripes and then placed the triangle-folded flag atop the flaming planks.
She walked off into the dark night toward her grandmother's porchlights.

Native

Daughter,
You and I
And Grandmother
Dance to this drum

We turn our bodies
Fringe and ribbons
Blowing into cold wind

We mirror each other's steps

Daughter,
They speak of blood brothers,
But you and I and my mother
Have a deeper bond

I felt you, little fish,
Swimming in my womb
And when the time came

My mother held my arms fast
As I squatted and pressed
You downstream

There was the smell of blood
And the comfort of my mother's eyes

And there you were, little fish:
My blood daughter.