Winter in Hamburg

A very important trip. 2024 Quill Awards Finalist

My mother’s hand trembles as I take it to help her stand from Seat 3A on Lufthansa Flight 400, our last leg of the journey to Hamburg, the city of her youth.

This was a trip she had talked about taking for years. She wanted us to travel together, so she could show me what Hamburg was like. This was the city of her childhood; where she went to school, where she worked, and where she and my dad met so many years ago.

I had a busy life. A husband. Children. A successful career. For years I would listen to her talk about the trip and agree that it was a very fine idea. I never meant to follow through on it. To actually travel with her to Das Vaterland.

And yet, here we are. The children are grown now with lives of their own. My husband and I retired last year. My husband said, “Honey. Take your mom. She really wants to go.” So we went.

Lufthansa gate personnel have a wheelchair waiting for her when we disembark. She smiles, happy to be fussed over, her eyes bright despite her advanced years. They grow even brighter when everyone around her is speaking German, her mother tongue.

I hold her hand as she’s wheeled through the airport to baggage claim, Stille Nacht playing over the airport’s speaker system. After our bags are collected, we find our driver who escorts us into a waiting car. This is my surprise to her, to have our own car and driver. It’s for me, too. I can speak German, but the stress of trying to rent a car and drive in this busy city is something I didn’t want to deal with.

At the hotel, the process is reversed when a wheelchair is brought out to the car. Mom is now chatting happily in German to anyone within earshot. This is a side of her I don’t see too often. Born before World War II, both of my parents endured hardship after hardship. They were poles apart on how they handled it afterward. My dad would make it seem as if it was all a joke, reminiscing about events that none of us kids could fathom. My mom became quiet. She doesn’t tell more than a few stories about that time in her life, hair-raising tales of taking a train through the Russian encampment outside Berchtesgaden on the way to school or walking with her family from Bavaria back to a ravaged, bombed-out Hamburg.

The next morning, after a decent night’s rest, we’re seated at the small table in our suite, my mother exclaiming “Endlich eine echte Tasse Kaffee!” as we’re poring over a street map of Hamburg.

I laugh at her excitement over a good cup of coffee, but that’s Mom for you. Quiet as a church mouse when it comes to important matters, then childlike in her enthusiasm for the smallest of things.

Bundled up against the frigid wind that blows from the north, our driver takes us from one remembered spot to another. We tour the Fischmarkt that still stands after all these years on the banks of the Elbe River.

I watch and listen as my mother comes to vibrant life in the back seat of that car. She chatters away to the driver, looking out of the windows, reaching over to pat my shoulder to draw attention to this building or that.

Things are different now. She realizes that. But through her eyes I begin too to see the Hamburg of her teenage years. A restored city full of hope and new life. A world where no bombs were dropped and no children were separated from their parents to live in a place they didn’t know, with foster parents that took them in to spare at least some of them from a certain death.

Driving down Werner-Otto Strasse, she asks the driver to pull over. He does. She points to a small business, the plate glass windows displaying a mouth-watering assortment of pastries and chocolates. “I was apprenticed there. It’s a Konditorei.”

“I remember,” I reply as I lean over her to get a better look. “That mean old shopkeeper who wouldn’t give you but one day off every two weeks?”

She nods. “It’s where I met your Dad,” she says. I don’t stop her from telling the story again. It’s one I don’t tire of hearing. New life. New hope. New love.

With tears in her eyes, she directs the driver on. “Your Dad walked here from his home. Nelkenweg 32. He was on an errand to buy Katzenzungen for his mother. The next time he returned, he bought a big box of them, then presented them to me.”

The home where my father lived with his parents is on our list of stops. We pull up to the row of attached houses. Mom stares for a long time at the clean and well-tended front garden. No one we know lives here now.

***

Back in our suite, I help Mom into her nightgown. We drink a last cup of hot tea in the sitting area in front of the fireplace. I watch her as she watches the flames leap, the silence broken only by the merry snap and crackle of burning logs.

“You’re the best daughter I could have ever hoped for,” she says quietly. I start to reply, but she stops me. “I mean it. I don’t say it enough. Not nearly enough. I was never able to speak my mind and now it’s almost too late.”

Setting my teacup on the small table, I kneel by her chair. “You’re happy we came on this trip then.”

Those bright eyes that will soon dim for the last time not a year later look into mine. “Ich bin damit zufrieden.”

“Ich auch.” I return to my chair, to my tea. It’s enough.

***
987 words

Prompt: Write a story or poem with the title “Winter in Hamburg”

Notes: Hamburg was one of the most heavily bombed cities in Germany during the Second World War. The children of the city were evacuated to other parts of Germany to keep them safe.

Das Vaterland: The Fatherland
Stille Nacht: Silent Night
Endlich eine echte Tasse Kaffee!: Finally, a good cup of coffee!
Fischmarkt: Hamburg’s famous Fish Market
Konditorei: Pastry or confectioner’s shop
Katzenzungen: literally “cat’s tongues” which is a shaped milk chocolate
Ich bin damit zufrieden: I’m happy about it
Ich auch: Me too