Page 46 - My Story

difficulty breathing. We arrived, and some nurses rushed out to meet us, left me in the waiting room and
hauled Janet off. I sat there, little bag at my side, waiting for Tom. Suddenly the double doors at the end
of the room opened to two doctors and a nurse, heading straight for me. They hauled me to my feet and
started to march me off – to what? I stammered, I stuttered and just as we were going through the doors,
I managed to get out that I wasn’t the patient and that she had already been taken care of. Fortunately,
Tom arrived just then and was able to corroborate that I was not his wife and, as far as he knew, not in
need of their attention. Whew!

Helen started at the Humboldt Gymnasium (secondary school) in Bad Homburg in September
1968 or ’69. She went there with Martina Schollenberger who was in a parallel class. The Schollenbergers
lived across from us and had two girls, Martina and Ute who was Susan’s best friend and a younger son.
Susan and Ute would take their Barbie dolls out to the Bugel, a lovely hill that was perfect for sledging in
the winter and play with them all day. We knew where they were and never worried about them. Frau
Schollenberger was always being held up as an example to me by my daughters because she was so young
– I believe she’d had Martina when she was about eighteen whereas I was an elderly mother – five or six
years older than she! Herr Schollenberger was an architect and worked in Bad Homburg and he would
take the girls to school, still sleepy in the back of his car. They caught the train back home in the
afternoon.

So, by the autumn of 1968 I had Toby in all day kindergarten, Susan and Hilary at the local
elementary school and Helen in Bad Homburg. Toby and the two girls came home for lunch and I believe
Helen took lunch with her although she was finished school pretty early. She enjoyed the Humboldt
Schule and made a good start there except in French. She disliked the French teacher and I believe the
feeling was mutual. He said to me grumpily at one parents’ evening, “Well, she’ll never make a linguist”.
To which I answered, “Her German is pretty good” and he looked at me astonished. He’d had no idea that
she was a foreigner. Anyway, her French today is quite good and gets her around Paris or Geneva very
well!

She also made a new friend, Almut Hahn, with whom she is in touch to this day. Almut was/is one of a
large family – are there five daughters and one son? Almut’s mother had firm rules about food. She
prided herself on producing three courses every day for dinner and it was all served in one dish so that if
you hadn’t finished your soup your meat, greens and potatoes were served on top of what you’d left and
if you left any of that it would be swimming in your dessert! I suppose it is one way of getting the children
to eat their food. Herr Hahn worked in a bank, he needed to with all those children, and we always
suspected him of being abusive. The mother joined a book club that I had started and was my most
faithful member. The ladies wanted to read American best sellers, so I remember reading a lot of John
Updike with all these very serious German women trying to understand the sexy bits. Anyway, Almut’s
mother found the book club a great outlet and told Helen, sometime later, how much I had helped her,
which was gratifying.

I marvel today at the many activities I participated in at the time. How did I have time to keep
house, cook, bake, sew, attend classes, conduct classes and drive my children around to their activities?
I suppose every mother does it although I believe fathers play a larger part nowadays.

We also learned about and participated in the Schlachtfest. This was when a villager would
slaughter a pig and the whole village would participate in the butchering and making of Wurst. I think
there might actually have been slaughterers who went around the countryside doing their thing. There
was always a lingering smell of cooking meat and in the evening long trestle tables and benches would be
placed outdoors and the whole village was invited to eat the remains – ears, trotters, tail, etc. and sample
the new Wurst

By 1971 we had Helen and Susan both at the Humboldt Gymnasium, Hilary at elementary school and
Toby having fun at Kindergarten. But Peter and I were becoming disillusioned with Germany and we
wanted our children to know more about England and the English. We found that the Germans, lovely
though they were to us, were something of a self-righteous people and we wanted to show the children
more of the English live and let live way of life. Peter began looking round for a new job that might take
him to England.

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