Edelweiss -- Rough Intro

I will never forget reading about and watching re-enactments of Flight 93. I almost instantly weep just thinking about a husband calling his wife to say “I love you,” or a daughter phoning her mother to apologize for foolish youth and to deliver salutations. I envision two strangers holding hands to recite the Lord’s Prayer with the reality of heaven and hell bearing down. I can hear loved ones screaming “why?” I can feel a father squeeze a mother, clinging to each other as the phone lines cease to carry their son’s voice. Tears fall on tray tables. Fingernails dig into armrests. 2,973 people died that day – 42 of them aboard Flight 93. These numbers are impossible for me to ingest, but I somehow feel a connection to the individuals.

I live in Mobile, Alabama, and at least once a week, I drive across the bay. The water is real to me -- the waves, the birds, the boats. I can look out my window, and without actually dipping in my toe, I am certain of the water’s existence; it is there, right under me. But of all the times I have stared out to where the ocean touches the sky, I understand that I have never seen the entire Gulf. It’s just too big. It’s physically impossible for me to hear the surf in Jamaica while watching a fisherman on the causeway. The ocean is perceivable only in fragments, just as the utmost of tragedy resides in the person, not the death toll.

Consider this: World War II claimed the lives of 62 million people, 400,000 of which were American. That’s 135 times the amount of Americans who perished on September 11. I can study the simple number, 62 million, and be appalled by it, but somehow, I find that empathy reigns when I see images of New York policemen’s limp bodies shattered by burnt rubble. People died all the same, be it in 1941 or 2001. The same love caressed cold cheeks in pine boxes, clutched discolored photographs soiled with dirt and blood, and uttered the same prayers and endured the same fears. The evil in man, if only for a moment, scoured its earth taking pains to scar whatever stood in its way.

In Germany, the World War II death toll peaked at 1.8 million civilian lives. Although I would like to believe that 1.8 million swastika-bearing Nazis were extinguished, I know this can’t be true. Many of these deaths must have been every bit as real and unbearable as the passengers’ of Flight 93. One I recall was of a young girl who was shot while running down the cobblestone streets where she had once roller skated. Another was a young boy who was bombed through the window of the living room where he had once spent hours learning to play the piano. There were mothers dragged lifeless from the attics where they had once gone to visit their stored wedding gowns, while fathers were slain in the doorways of the homes in which they had taken pride building – in which they had hoped to share a lifetime with their wives and children.

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The first memory of my grandmother was her voice. It was different from that of my other family members’. It carried joy in waves of elongated vowels, and had deep throated consonance. It was clumsy and would often make me giggle whenever it tripped over words like “ketchup” and “ chocolate.” When she would call my name, both the “z” and “th” came out as a hiss. “Elissibiss.” I never corrected her, and it hurt my feelings when my cousins would mock her for it.

She almost always smiled. I guess she knew that even the worst of mistakes were not that catastrophic -- not in the grand scheme of things. Her indigo eyes would tighten and her cheeks plumped and rose. People say I have her eyes -- of all her many children and grandchildren, I am the only one that turned out with blue eyes.

My grandmother had a taste for the finer things in life. This became especially evident after my grandfather passed away. To this day, she is the only white-haired lady in Opelika, Alabama who drives a fiery red Cadillac. Red was her favorite color. She had red coats, red shoes, red handbags, and red gloves. The Neiman Marcus catalogs in her bathroom were always dog-eared on the red blouses and ruby necklaces.

She always smelled of lavender, clean and crisp. She bathed in a French soap stamped “Pre de Provence.” She was a connoisseur of perfumes, and one of her favorites was Dolce and Gabbana, though maybe it was because it came with a red cap, and packed in a red box. She even taught me to tear the fragrance samples from catalogs and hide them in my underwear drawer. I suppose she even wanted her underwear to smell of D&G.

At church, I would always cross my fingers and say a quick prayer that Gran-Gran would invite me to Red Lobster after mass. My father was a great cook, and he could never justify spending the money to take us to dinner if he could cook the meal himself, and just as well. My grandmother was the only chance I had to inhale cheese rolls and indulge myself in crab legs. Lucky for me, she could eat shrimp scampi until she turned pink.

Her house was chock full of interesting trinkets, old artifacts, and closets that yearned for young girls to explore. She would let me dress up in my mom’s old clothes. One day, she gave me an old mechanical watch she wore in nursing school and accented it with a gemstone ring, wrapped in mounds of Scotch tape so it would not slip from my finger. She would let me play with her old evening bags and change purses. All her bags exuded old perfume, and hidden in the inside zipper was always an old handkerchief, or a folded piece of pink tissue.

My favorite place in her house was the wood-paneled closet in her hallway. Inside were old Sinatra records and the Chipmunks singing Christmas carols. There were old books too – a Bible written in old German, a pictorial of horses, and a dog encyclopedia with a funny picture of a Great Dane driving a car on the back cover. There were brittle, yellowed newspaper clippings from every event she had considered noteworthy – births, deaths, Hurricane Fredrick, and the restoration of Governor Samford’s mansion.

When I was in the seventh grade, I developed a short-lived fascination with the assignation of John F. Kennedy. One Saturday, I brought over books by Jim Garrison, explaining to her how any being with at least two good brain cells could easily debunk the Warren Commission. She laughed and retreated to the closet. When she emerged, she was clutching the actual 1964 Life Magazine depicting Lee Harvey Oswald holding the rifle that was used to kill President Kennedy. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I begged her to leave it to me in her will.

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My mother told me about Gran-Gran and The War. I cannot recall how or where the subject arose, but I remember feeling special to have been born her granddaughter.

My German heritage had been a given for as long as I could remember. When I was only four-years-old, I flew over to visit my great grandmother in Bavaria when she was ill. I even remember playing ball in my family’s sheep pasture on a foothill of the Alps. My great grandmother’s new husband even gave me my own lamb. We named him Mauschi.

This idea of war was new, and I did not understand what it meant. I do remember my fourth grade class reading a chapter book about two friends, Annemarie and her Jewish friend, Ellen. The novel was called Number the Stars. In it, Annemarie’s family risked their lives to save Ellen from the clutches of the S.S.

With every page Mrs. Rosenblatt turned, I thought about Gran-Gran. I wondered whether she had encountered any of these people called “Jews.” I hoped that she would have been friendly and honorable like Annemarie.

I wondered why Jewish people had been persecuted during The War. I had never met any Jewish person in my life, and did not know anything about their religion or culture. All I could think of was the Passion play at Good Friday mass, and wasn’t it the Jews who had chanted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Maybe that was why people had sought revenge, but as for Ellen, she had never hurt anyone. I felt sure that people like her and her family would never intentionally bring harm to others.