I went anyway, expecting disciplinary action. All hell broke loose at the construction site.
A huge mountain of liquid concrete poured out onto the street. The site manager had found five men in a hurry. We worked like maniacs through the afternoon and all night. Fortunately, the storm and freezing rain prevented the concrete from curing quickly. By dawn, it was done.
A few cubic meters began to solidify and had to remain unprocessed love. Even years later, a large gray, almost circular stain left by the concrete on the roadway was a reminder of the heavy hurricane night.
During this disaster operation, I contracted a severe nerve inflammation in my left arm, which put me out of action for a few weeks, as the arm had to be plastered. After that, the Red Hilde waived disciplinary proceedings.
Another small, insignificant episode was only indirectly related to the construction of the house, but it was later to be of fundamental and far-reaching importance. When I came to the construction site after work, I regularly bought a decent piece of hunter’s sausage or beer ham, two rolls and a lemonade in the small corner store across the street, because it still took until dinner.
One day, while pushing the sausage and lemonade across the counter for me, the salesperson regretted that the bread and rolls were sold out. Across the street, a young girl was walking with a stroller. I had seen the girl several times before, so I assumed she lived right nearby and asked her for a slice of bread.
The girl disappeared into the next front door, came back shortly afterwards, and handed me three slices of bread on a plate, which were even spread with butter. I thanked her politely and thought regretfully, ‘Why does such a young pretty girl have to have a baby already?’
However, the baby in the stroller was not hers, but the youngest of her six siblings, as she told me later. Since that time I greeted the girl like a good acquaintance and could not get rid of the feeling that she was somehow waiting for me. My feeling should not have deceived me.
Even after my mother’s death, my relationship with my father remained strained, so I rarely visited him, although I was in my hometown almost every week for the combo. He also lived with a longtime work colleague who took care of him and whom he eventually married.
Maria, his new wife, I didn’t like. She was too effusively friendly, and that made me suspicious. Moreover, in her presence it was difficult to talk to my father about the causes of the rift and my past mistakes. So the relationship remained tense. I knew that my father was a very caring grandpa.
Since all his grandchildren were boys, I hoped that when I presented Jacky to him, our relationship would then become more cordial again. I knew from my childhood that his heartbeat especially for little girls.
In my memory I could still clearly see how my father often took my sister in his arms, danced around the parlor with her, and sang and whistled the ragamuffin: ‘Can you whistle, Johanna? – Of course I can!’ But the planned reconciliation never happened.
In March 1972, without any warning, Grandpa Alfred died of a heart attack at his workplace. After his death, Maria showed her true self. She locked the apartment. Without speaking a single word to my sister or to me, she destroyed all photos and written memories of our parents. Why she acted so cold-heartedly remains unexplained. 𝓣𝓸 𝓑𝓮 𝓒𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓮𝓭…
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