I come from Between
On beginnings and belongings
I come from two little girls, splashing their feet in the shallow waves of an Austrian lake at the beginning of the last century. The girls, Elly and Renée, later became my grandmothers.
After World War I, Red Cross buses came to Vienna to take malnourished children up to thirteen to Sweden over the summer. Elly, skin and bones, was fourteen. She walked up to one of the staff and said "Take me with you, or I'll die". They did, and she lived, in Sweden. She also fell in love, and stayed. Elly had brought her diary to her new country and kept writing in it. First in German, then with a few words in Swedish sprinkled over the pages, and as the years went by, more and more in Swedish.
Another war began. My father was born in Vienna as the youngest to Renée. He too malnourished and poorly. The family fled westward to the lake district. In the late -50's Elly took her family, including my mother, to Austria to see Renée and her family. My mother was 14 and my father 18. They too splashed their toes in the lake, wanting but not daring to talk. My mother had refused to speak German until then, but as the relationship grew she had to.
My father moved to Sweden as a migrant of love, and learned Swedish. My parents got married and my brother and I were born in the early -70's. With the common idea at the time of bilingualism as a risk, our parents decided to raise us monolingual in Swedish. On our trips to Austria I learned what I call Summer German or Food German, because those were the topics I could talk about. I dipped my sticky fingers in the dough to the Vanillekipferln and sat in my my grandmother Renée's lap, telling her I was her Schmeichelkatze. Nowadays I still know a decent food and summer German, but I can't talk about what I do for a living. I try for a while. Austria is in my heart and I ache to speak the language that flutters like birdsong in my heart, but isn't fully mine. At best I come across as a ten-year-old. I realize both my parents and Elly must have struggled too to learn a new language.
Austria has always felt close, still distant, and only available to me for a few fleeting summer weeks. Hazy memories of the smell of moth repellant in Renée's Dirndl wardrobe, eating Ribiseln in yoghurt in my aunt's Vienna garden, Semmeln mit Marillenmarmelade for breakfast. In Sweden I always feel a bit Austrian, but once I go to Austria I feel as Swedish as I can get. Still, as I grew up I was expected to be Austrian since my father is, and Swedish because I was born and raised here.
Language has always been important in my life. I took a BA in linguistics, studied to become a Sign Language interpreter, left the vocation and later finished an MA in bilingualism. Perhaps my striving to understand the subtleties of language and communication comes from that semi-bicultural upbringing, from so often being one step behind in getting the point.
I watch my husband's nephews who are bilingual through their Swedish mother and German father, how they pick words from one language when they can't find it in the other, excavating their languages as one source with a thousand possibilities. My heart flutters its birdsong again as I hear them mumble "The truck doesn't have an Anhänger!". But the Anhänger was right there to fill the space, and they knew it, just as they know how to breathe.
I carve out room for reflection in my writing, and embrace the betweenship I grew up in. I sew my worlds together with the words I choose, and sometimes make up, to fill a new space. The space may appear between or just a little to the side, calling me, pulling me close. I want to grasp what feels distant. I sharpen, shape and bend until a phrase of just the right flavour of Between softly lands in my hand. I move between rational and spiritual, poetry and prose, inner and outer. I puff up a space in between and open the door to a room that wasn't there before. In that space I want to write in beauty and for the reader to inhale.
I write this sitting on a tree stump with my own feet splashing in the water, pondering about what made me who I am. I chose to dive deep into and later write about spinning, something so nerdy that few people even reflect over its existence. Perhaps it is my way of being one step ahead, of creating and filling my space with meaning, of being and writing in the world. Shaped by the friendship between my grandmothers, I write with Between as my source.
Where do you come from?
My own Great Grandmother came to America from Austria about a decade before WWI. She was the only one of her family to make it across the ocean. Unfortunately her brother perished in a Concentration camp in Austria during WWII. Her son, however, entered the U. S. Navy during the war, where he met my grandmother who was a secretary at the Naval base he was stationed at. Their son, my uncle, would later join the army and be stationed at the Burlin wall. We did not find out about our Jewish background or her brother's death until my grandmother passed last year at the ripe old age of 98. Her mother in law lived to be 100. Ironically I am neither learning German nor Yiddish, but instead I am learning Japanese. Go figure,💁♀️. I have always been curious about what being multi lingual was like for you. Thank you for sharing your story. Like you I still can't talk about my hobbies in another language just yet.
I was born in Southeast Tennessee, close to the Georgia line. I have moved away a few times but always return. I am currently living in the house my father bought in the 1940’s. I raise 3 sheep, chickens, rabbits, dogs and cats. It’s my comfort place!!!!