Dads stories

How I met Oma

Note: this story was written by Dad for me to put into our family history file. Inge.
What better time is there than starting a family history at the beginning, when it all started, when unwittingly the first permanent ties were knotted.

It was on the Tuesday at about 10 PM in 1948, Fastnacht.

Fastnacht is the correct expression for the annual recurrance of a 4 day long carnival which is celebrated in the part of Germany Oma and I come from. Literally translated it means "night before the fast", the fast period being the 6 weeks before Easter where the Catholic community observe a more or less stringent control of behaviour. No feasting, drinking or hello ballooning of any kind. These customs are hundreds of years old and at the time we were young were still very much contained in the annual-cycle of our lives.

In the Fastnacht period people turn into something else. They run around in mad costumes and masks. Practical jokes and cracks at one another are the order of the day, dancing is on every night everywhere and one can even see people dancing in the street for the fun of it. One habit of the slightly more promiscuity type is that total strangers or anybody will give each other a kiss, and that is not to be refused by the law of the day. And it is not that blow towards the ear one sees applied nowadays in society, which I have always regarded as something very insincere, no, it is the smack right square on the mouth without further intentions.

Then, on that Tuesday night at 10 PM, just two hours before closing time of that Fastnacht, I was walking around the dance hall to find a partner. That was at the end of 4 days of mad dancing and hopping about and kissing . I say that because on almost every dance the dance band would stop and play the “Schäflein Kniee” tune, by which every couple had to kneel to the floor and kiss each other. And then the dance went on. As I said before, there were no further strings attached, it was the custom of the day. Smooching in public was strictly not on, that had to be done outside in front of the door or around the corner in the normal fashion.

I had left it a bit late, everybody was already dancing. But I spotted two girls up on the landing. One was Oma, the other Renate who came here to visit us some time ago. So Oma accepted my invitation and we went to join the others on the dance floor. Then came the “Schäflein Kniee” tune at which we went dutifully to the floor and kissed each other. And it was just right there that it happened. We looked each other in the eyes, and what I saw has been permanently fastened in my mind and has been there since. It was Oma's eyes, her look, which I would not be able to describe, which welded me to her for the rest of my life.

posted by Inge @ 7:57 am