The Wall of Fathers & Sons

Heading to New York City for the weekend. I will probably blog about it when I return but won't be blogging while there. Too much to do and see and eat and drink.

New York City is where my Dad's parents lived their American lives. As immigrants from Germany after World War I, they settled in NYC and never left as husband and wife. They also had a cabin in the woods by a lake close to the Catskills that is still in the family.

My dad grew up in New York City and we visited his parents often. I always liked laying flat in the back of the station wagon and looking straight up at the skyscrapers. I also loved the fresh bagels my grandparents brought down from NYC to our home in the Philly 'burbs.

Thus, I associate New York City with my dad, with his parents, and with Germany. My grandparents were considering a return to Germany in the 1930's, but my grandmother knew that war was coming. She had lived through World War I and had no desire to live (or die) in a sequel. It was not easy being a German person fairly fresh off the boat from the Fatherland during those times. My dad apparently endured a fair share of taunting, as a little kraut, as a kid. To their credit, my grandparents had no sympathy with Hitler and the Nazis. But, they also had no shame in being German. That distinction was lost...and is lost on many.

I visited my Dad in Germany with my older brother Mike back in the summer of 1981. My dad was working in Frankfurt and we traveled throughout Germany for close to a month. I would like to say is was all fun and games, but there was a lot of hurt and animosity between my Dad and I. The Berlin Wall (a piece of it pictured above with my father) became emblematic of the wall between father and son. For what the Berlin Wall represented, separation of people, first exists in families, then communities, then nations. We could even consider the divisions that we have in our own hearts towards others. The history of Germany superimposed itself on my family's story to some extent.

As the years have gone by, the Wall between father and son has fallen. There are chunks of anger remaining, but most of the wall is in ruin. My dad has mellowed and I am more wise to the ways of the world. It is not easy being a parent, or an adult for that matter, and suppositions and conclusions I had formulated as an angry adolescent have not stood the test of time. Time is not necessarily the healer of all wounds, for God is truly the only healer. We all know people where time has only hardened and deepened the hurt.

Here's to Pop who reads my blog faithfully and dislikes too many religious references. Sorry Dad, I have a Heavenly Father who is well-pleased in such words and you are just going to have to endure it!