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Liebe Inge,

From the very first day I met you, you took me under your wing like a mother takes in her own child. Although you were hesitant at first to give me German lessons, not knowing where it would take the both of us, you ultimately decided to give me the benefit of the doubt – and for that I will forever be grateful to you.

Because from that day on, my life turned for the better and it was all thanks to your kindness, selflessness, and nurture.

With your help and patience, my 8 year-old self quickly began soaking in the German language. But even more than that, with every additional lesson we shared, I began to see you as a best friend rather than just my German teacher.
Our hourly lessons quickly became the highlight of my weekends and reflecting back, there is no doubt as to why.

Before I even stepped foot into your entryway, you’d greet me with my favorite German Lyoner-Brot (the better equivalent to a bologna sandwich) because you knew it was my favorite meal that I could get nowhere else but at your home. You made sure to reward me with delicious, German chocolate cookies topped with rainbow sprinkles during our spelling and grammar tests, because you understood that sugary snacks were a huge motivator for me. And after our lessons, you’d pull out my favorite Monopoly game and play with me so long until my father would arrive to pick me up, sometimes even for hours, while we waited for my father to finish work and head across town to pick me up.

You were never obligated to do any of the above, and yet you still did – out of the kindness of your own heart. As an 8 year-old, I was happy I had found a friend like you. As a 27 year-old reflecting back on your kindness today, I am beyond thankful.

Fast forward to a few years later and again, you showed me that selflessness has no boundaries. Immediately upon receiving a phone call that I was suffering from extreme food poisoning at a soccer camp in Denmark, you were on your way from Hamburg to Denmark to pick me up and bring me somewhere where I could get better. The weeks that followed were probably my favorite memories we share to this day. You managed to nurture me back to good health thanks to Coca Cola and Salzstangen (pretzel sticks), while letting me stay at your brother’s house in northern Germany, where we spent wonderful sun-filled days in the garden, picking strawberries and gooseberries and baking different pies.

Today, I am living in Germany, married to a German man, and speaking the same Hochdeutsch you succeeded in teaching me two decades ago. But that’s not all that I managed to learn from you dear Inge. You’ve instilled in me values that have shaped me into the woman I am today. You made this world a much better place and I aim to continue your legacy of giving.

How lucky I am to have you which makes saying goodbye so hard. How lucky I am to have our memories which makes holding onto them so easy.

Ich werde dich sehr vermissen liebe Inge. Du bleibst für immer in unseren Gedanken.

deine kleine Maus (Ana)

I met Inge in my previous life – or so it feels now. More than 20 years ago. Frau Inge – that is how we called her ever since. I met her at the German House in downtown Portland at one of their Sunday cultural events. I was looking for a German language tutor for my daughter who was still a little child back then.

I was hungry for languages – but it was too late for myself, I guess, to pick up German. And I compensated for my own childhood opportunities never taken by getting my preschooler daughter into the mix. I know it sounds strange in the world of the melting pot – but in my head I still had cultural values from the 60s and 70s of the last century. Where your language and your cultural heritage clearly defined you.

Frau Inge epitomized to me everything that I have always thought of Germans and imagined them to be – serious without being forbidding, responsible and dedicated, thoughtful and orderly.

She had a life philosophy of her own – something that not everybody has in this world. And I respected that, and, frankly, shared her life values and her philosophy. To me, her love of music, reading, travelling, spending quiet time all spoke of a particular lifestyle of old Europe that I have never experienced myself, that I only read about in history books and saw on black-and-white pictures.

She was hesitant to embark on that tutoring project – I could totally understand it. It was easy to mistake me for yet another supercharged parent with starry-eyed visions for his daughter that are here today and wlll be gone tomorrow. But Frau Inge gave me and my daughter the benefit of the doubt – and I am immensely grateful to her for that. It worked – this whole idea that my daughter should speak the language like a native. She spent hours with her, they were reading and writing in German. It went well beyond the nuts and bolts of language study. Frau Inge became friends with my daughter – the essence of that very special relationship that can only exist between the seasoned adult with a lifetime behind her and the young and vibrant entrant to this world. There was that warmth and the special feeling, that undercurrent, the chemistry of amity and understanding between the two of them.

I often encroached on her time, I guess, and we plunged into discussions that only friends can have – reflecting on the imperfections of the world and the shortcomings of the human character as we saw it. We were not bitter in our view of the world – rather, honest and straightforward. She held strong opinions on most issues – something that I respect immensely. We talked a lot about child rearing and schooling. I found her to be the person that I could learn from in many respects.

Frau Inge treated my daughter as one of her family – and it resonated with me. Looking back on the past 20 years of my life I am trying to think of a person that I felt so much in tune with – and she is the only one. Although – I guess that needs an addition! Her husband Horst was as much a part of our philosophical discourse! I tried to glean from both of them that atmosphere of the old Europe that they had been immersed in in their youth – that fast-disappearing texture. Horst and Frau Inge were to me the messengers of the legacy of European culture and civilization that I missed out on because of my life behind the iron curtain.

I remember, as if this was just yesterday, June 22, 2001 when we – all of us – had dinner together at our house in Camas. There was Horst and Frau Inge, my mom and her husband.

It was a dinner like many others in life – but now, as I look back on it, I realize to me that was a moment of happiness. Spontaneous happiness – the kind that makes you go back to in your thoughts and marvel at, and ask yourself incredulously – what was so special about it? And the special thing was – I felt happy.

And I am grieving now – because those people that brought happiness and suffused with it that day in June in the distant past twenty-one years ago – they are no longer with us.

They have each gone from this world at their time, leaving for us just the memories and that intangible feeling of happiness gone past – the butterfly of our memory that circled around us and then disappeared.

And my eyes fill with tears, and I am trying to leaf through the pages of the calendar back to those hours in the quiet of her home, with my daughter and Frau Inge sitting side by side, hunched over a German book, and me walking in on that picture of bliss and inexplicable happiness.

I want to give her tribute for having been part of life of so many people that she made happier myself being one of them.

And I want to share with her the poem by Bella Akhmadullina the translation of which she would definitely enjoy if only she could hear it. The sad and beautiful poem of friends leaving each other and all of us on the journey of no return

Along my street, these steady steps resound
Year after year: my friends are slowly leaving.
The all-absorbing lightlessness around
Finds ease in seeing me alone and grieving.

O loneliness! Indeed, your touch is cold!
Of pointless reassurances regardless,
The metal pair of compasses you hold,
Encircling me with unforgiving hardness.

So call on me and prize my lonely quest!
Spoiled rotten by your nurturing and caring,
Ill find the comfort resting on your chest
And wash my cheeks with your blue chillness airing.

Let me tiptoe beneath your rustling trees,
My timid gesture bridging through the distance,
Discover foliage, bring it close, and breathe,
And feel the bliss of castaway existence.

Give me the silence of your reading room,
Your chamber music, elegant and soothing,
And in my wisdom, I’ll relinquish soon
Those still alive and those whom I am losing.

Of doleful wisdom I shall learn the worth,
The hidden sense of objects will come clear,
And in an intimate embrace, the earth
Will tell the secrets of her childhood years.

And at that time, from darkness that descends,
From pain, from ignorance of days so olden,
Ill see the graceful features of my friends
Coming to light – and then again dissolving.