In the living room, instead of the black-and-white set, there was a brand-new color TV.
I wasn’t even particularly surprised because I had guessed something like that from their behavior. Of course, the device could not be paid for in cash right away.
Sylvia promised her benefactor to transfer the purchase price immediately to the business account, because the transaction was not without risk for the managing director.
To drive from Mecklenburg to the fair city with a color TV in the car, just to do a favor for a nice host, believe who will. The next day, we scraped together what money we could, but it wasn’t enough.
So I had to borrow a considerable sum from a colleague at work. This was shameful for me, even though my colleague didn’t even ask what I needed the money for or when I would pay it back.
This blind trust shamed me most of all. I also silently let this bad incident pass me by. Why should I get upset? It had happened and could not be undone anyway.
After this almost criminal misconduct, I didn’t know whether to leave or stay. But just before Christmas, I didn’t want to have any more trouble.
My mental state was not the best when completely unexpectedly my son Thomas showed up. I was so surprised by my first impression that I didn’t know whether I should really be happy.
How he stood in front of me like that, strange and almost a head taller than me, in a long leather coat, ring in his ear and bald or with a hippie haircut, I can’t remember exactly.
In conversation my mind changed, Thomas had reasonable views and knew very well what he wanted. Among other things, he asked me to send the alimony I regularly paid to his mother directly to him.
‘But the money belongs to me,’ he said, and he hasn’t been going home for a long time. I would have liked to do my boy that favor, but unfortunately, I had to explain to him that it was impossible without his mother’s consent.
Thomas strictly refused my request to stay with me over the holidays. That same evening I had to drive him to the train station.
Unsuspecting and with guilt in my heart, I said goodbye to my boy. I could not know that I would lose Thomas a second time for many years. The late seventies were full of surprises and changes.
For the second time, I had left Chris alone and without news for several weeks during the summer while I was on vacation abroad with my wife.
I still thought Christiane’s affections were basically a dreamy young-girl crush that would eventually evaporate like cool early morning mist in the morning sun, of that I was convinced. But her behavior did not change.
Against my expectations, Chris had taken her mother into her confidence during my absence, who of course was anything but thrilled with her daughter’s choice.
Twenty years older and married to boot. What good would that do? But she did not interfere and silently tolerated our relationship. Now I no longer had to sneak secretly to Chris and soon belonged to the family. 𝓣𝓸 𝓑𝓮 𝓒𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓮𝓭…
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