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It's been three
months and I've finally developed the rest of my film.
Unlike the immediacy of an approaching deadline in photojournalism, personal
pictures sometimes take on a different significance as time manages to
give us better insight, heal wounds, or give us a different perspective
of what was happening at the time we pressed the shutter.
I admit that my motives weren't entirely altruistic when I accepted my
dad's invitation to accompany him to Europe last November.
It had been five years since my last trip to see cousins in Germany and
it had been nearly sixteen, since I had seen friends from Italy. Both
countries were to be stops on our itinerary.
A year after my mother died in July of 1996, my father suggested we go
to Europe together. My bags were packed in a heartbeat. But he cancelled
at the last minute because of a business committment. And so, in early
November 1998 my dad and I set out to retrace old steps and forge new
paths together. It was a journey that took many detours, both geographic
and emotional.
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Except for my father's deployment in the
Navy to Australia during World War II, as a pharmacist's assistant,
I was the first of my family to venture beyond US borders, pursuing
Foreign Language and Linguistics studies in Spain, where I spent
my senior year finishing up my undergraduate degree in the early
seventies. During my vacations while living and working in Spain,
after receiving my degree, I travelled throughout Europe, renewing
old friendships and making many new ones, some of which have endured
a lifetime. Many of us have kept in touch with periodic visits,
but mainly through letters, and more recently, Email.
In 1974, I met my German relatives for
the first time. The last picture they had seen of me was my kindergarten
picture. The last pictures I had seen of my German family were from
the late forties and early fifties.
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Dad, Deidesheim, Germany (c) 1998 Susan B.
Markisz
Dad, Florence, Italy (c) 1998 Susan B. Markisz
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But they recognized me instantly when I appeared
on their doorstep unannounced one evening, throwing arms around me, holding
me to buxom chests, with tears streaming down their faces, saying: "Ah,
die Susanne, Susanne, willkommen."
| I was 21 at the time. There
was instantaneous recognition that transcended a 15 year time warp.
My maternal grandmother had emigrated from Germany in 1906 on steerage
at the age of 16, one of only three of her 10 brothers and sisters
who came to the United States. Before her death in 1959, she had left
behind a rich verbal history of names of aunts, uncles and cousins
and tiny villages. Her care packages and family updates had kept her
connected with her family there. I dreamed of seeing those places
one day and connecting the dots. Part of my subconscious motivation
for studying foreign languages and linguistics, I suppose, was to
find out more about my German ancestry. |
The Alpine village of Going, empty, except for
my dad, myself, and memories of my mom. (c) 1998 Susan B. Markisz
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| We reconnected on a level
of intensity that has imbued my life with a richness of heritage and
friendship that was kept alive through my grandmother's stories, handed
down to my mother and told to me over and over again until I knew
the names and places by heart. |
My dad and enjoyed the company of friends of
mine, Rudi and Tina Pekar, in Wals, near Salzburg. (c) 1998 Susan
B. Markisz |
| Six months after my first
visit, I took my mother for the first time, to introduce her to her
mother's family and birthplace, a little town called Gollheim, in
Germany. My parents did not return to Europe for several years afterwards.
But once they did, they returned every year, sometimes twice, always
visiting my mother's family, and finding happiness in their own discovery
of the small towns and villages of Europe. |
My Tante Johanna and Tante Emma welcomed me
with open arms when I appeared on their doorstep one evening in January
1974. |
And so, on this most recent
trip, while my dad was happy enough to be stopping off in the European
cities of my past to say hello to old friends and drink Pilsner, Prosecco
and Grappa, we meandered down Alpine roads with long circuitous tunnels
and searched for towns through which he and my mother had passed.
"Your mother and I stayed in an inn somewhere around here...why
not drive into this little town---ah, no, it's not here," he
would say..."maybe a little father on."
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My dad occasionally asked me what I saw in scenes
such as this one. windowlight, color, reflections...and that, after
all, is about all. (c) 1998 Susan B. Markisz |
As we drove through
a ten kilometer tunnel in the Alps, with no end in sight, I nearly
went into panic, as much from claustrophobia as from the sudden clarity
that my dad and I were on two separate journies.
He, clutching a map, saying "turn here, ah yes, here..."
with a palpable sigh of relief that he had finally found a place that
he and my mom had been, a point on a map, thumbtacked to an invisible
wall, a wellspring of memories surfacing for him, and the realization
for both of us, that his wife of 45 years, and my mother, was not
there. |
Mom, my Grandmother Elisabeth Spohr & me 1953
Washington, DC |
It was a painful time. The image etched in my mind, as if on ground
glass, is of my father sitting in the car at once impatient with me
for missing a turn, because the adolescent in me was doing 100 mph
in our rented beemer---my dad clutching the edges of a map of Europe,
his finger pointing to a town called Going, as if God was "going"
to somehow miraculously beam down my mother for a few seconds.
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It was a joyful time. Together we talked about my mom, and how she
loved these towns. My dad said they never had reservations or a a
set itinerary, preferring instead to take local roads and their chances
on finding a small family run inn. They became acquainted with many
little towns and some inkeepers knew them well. I knew how much my
connecting the dots" had meant to my mom, but it was she and
my dad who ultimately made Europe a second home of sorts.
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Gollheim, Germany, my grandmother's birthplace,
hasn't changed much since the date of this postcard, sent to her by
one of her sisters in 1911, shortly after her emigration to the US.
The arch was built in 1784 and only one car can pass through at a
time. |
I had learned most of my family's history from
my mom. After school nearly every day, we would sit and chat up a storm,
and I would consume volumes of Reese's
peanut butter cups as my mother listened to my tales of teenage crushes
and unrequieted love. Somehow she must have gotten a word in edgewise,
because I remember much of what she's told me. Until this trip, I'd never
really heard much about my dad's family, about which he said little, nor
had I ever heard my dad's version of how he and my mom had met.
"I remember how your mother looked the night we met," he said.
"She walked into the Lotus Club with some of her friends; she had
her hair up in a bun, and she wore high heels and was...tall and...stunning."
The Lotus Club was a place in Washington DC, where couples or singles
could come and enjoy the sounds of the big bands. "She was an excellent
dancer, so tall, beautiful and graceful," he said, wiping away a
tear. In fact, one of the most wonderful things, to me, their daughter,
was to watch them dance at a wedding. They glowed when they danced. Like
the Red Sea, the crowd would often part, simply to watch their graceful
movements on the dancefloor.
I learned how my dad, a native Virginian, who had gone to college on the
GI Bill and
graduated from George Washington University, narrowly missed getting his
Master's
Degree in Economics "because of your mother" he said one night.
When pressed for details, he said he had been working during the day and
going to classes at night. "I was simply in love with her and I wanted
to spend time with her so I started cutting some classes." Nearly
finished with his thesis, the only thing that was lacking was his defense.
"It just wasn't important anymore," he said. (I wondered how
well this kind of reasoning might have sat with him when I was in college,
but I laughed about it to myself instead of interrupting the poignancy
of that moment).
My dad became a very successful businessman, in spite it, and his knowledge
of the United States and United States history has always impressed me,
notwithstanding his impression that the South emerged somehow victorious
in the Civil War.
I'm not sure just what my dad learned about me except that he wasn't always
happy about my continual search for imagery on our trip. "What did
you see in that little scene?" he would ask. Eventually we agreed
to go our separate ways in various cities and meet up later in a cafe.
Just before I headed off to see friends in Rimini, I left my dad in the
town of Ancona in Italy, for his flight back home to the States. I told
him I loved him and thanked him for the opportunity to spend time with
him and to reconnect with old friends. I said that somehow, I didn't think
I was the companion he'd wanted me to be.
"No sweetie, it wasn't that...I had a good time," he said..."it
was just, well, all the
pictures..."
In hindsight, surely it was the pictures, the pictures I couldn't take,
pictures that for him happened long ago. No matter how good a photographer,
no matter how good a daughter, I simply couldn't recreate images that
for him, exist only in memory.
Dad, Mom and me 1953 Washington, DC |
Mom and Dad 's 40th Anniversary (c) Susan B.
Markisz |
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