Omi And Opa
All month I wanted to write a post about my grandparents Helene and Albert Erbse who I loved very much and who both would have turned 100 this month if they would still be alive.
First I was frantically looking for a picture of them but was not able to find one that I liked. But does it really matter how they looked like? Will we be remembered for our looks when we are gone or for our actions?
My grandparents were simple and hard working people. As long as I knew them it was never about them, it was always about us. They would not buy things for them to be able to give to us. Most of my positive childhood memories are connected to them. Since my parents were constantly working in the family travel business and my grandparents were just living a few blocks away at least in the first seven years of my life I spent more time with them then with my parents.
And what a time it was. We were constantly doing things. Both of them were retired so they had plenty of time. We would play, grandma (omi) would cook my sister and me our favorite foods, grandpa (opa) would tell us stories or we all would play games. I still remember going with opa to the forest to pick berries and him pointing at a hole in the ground telling me that gnomes would live underneath the trees. We put our ears on the ground and he would say, “Cant you hear them, can’t you hear them” and I was convinced I would hear something.
Christmas was always the best time. My opa used to be a baker. We would bake together, every year I would feel sick because I ate so much raw dough and he also would make a gingerbread house based on the “Hensel and Gretel” story by the brother Grimm. It was covered with sweets; there was a wooden Hensel, a Gretel, a witch in front of the house and a cat on the chimney. He made sugar icicles and the snow was made out of powder sugar. There was even a red light inside of the house that you could turn on when it was getting dark.
And there was the country house. My grandparents owned a country house that was about 90 minuets away from were they lived. My grandfather loved the outdoors and whenever he could spend time out there. I loved it. There was a swing, a sandbox and all kinds of wild animals. As a child I used to be a huge nature fan. The two things I hated most was cities and shopping for cloths. What a contradiction that all these years later I live in New York City and work as a fashion photographer.
I have bee thinking about why I love them so much. It is not really about what they did with us. It was because I felt save, loved and cared for. I knew my grandparents would always be there for me. I could come to them with anything and they would do all they could and more to help me. They always were there for me. My grandpa taught me how ride a bike with a bad knee at age 66, my grandmother would secretly give me money to be able to buy lunch at school against the will of my strict father or sign off on bad grades in school to keep me from getting in trouble with my mother. They traveled all the way to the north of Germany to see me finish boot camp. The packages I received from my grandmother while I was on a ship during my military service did not feed me but also four of my comrades and they seriously considered visiting me in New York City, both 91 years old and my grandmother being almost blind.
They were also really interesting people to talk to. Having lived through two world wars they had seen the first radios, motorcycles, cars, TV’s, Zeppelins, planes all the way up to a microwave and cable television. My grandfather had seen Moscow during the war when they had to turn around and find their way back home. My grandmother being after war on the by Russians occupied East German side paid off a Russian officer with a watch to help her to cross the border to the west with everything she owned. They had gone through a lot and had many stories to tell.
They were not perfect. They both had faults and I was ready to address those here. But again, does it matter? All that matters is that we loved each other. They expressed their love by always being there for me, I expressed my love by being there for them. That is all that matters.
So instead of trying to find the perfect image of them for today’s post I went up to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I lit two candles, One for Omi and one for Opa. I thanked them for everything, I smiled, and I left the church and walked into the beautiful afternoon sun.
"Omi And Opa" Manhattan/New York City/St. Patrick's Cathedral 03-31-09 at 04:21 PM
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