Eberhard put school pictures of the girls in a pack of cigarettes and we said goodbye, gave him the last of the turkey in a Ziploc bag. When he leaves, mom always goes to the kitchen sink window where they wave again as he crosses down the path to where he parks below. The cats destroyed one of the stress balls we got the kids, Charlotte’s, and the filling inside looks like flour, the same as the stress balls we made with Eberhard when we first came. We tried to go for a long walk but the weather was strange, the wind coming in, and I watched an empty cup spin on the ground by the entrance to the music school, the one by the church that used to be a prison. The neighbor’s grand-daughter came by for a play date, and Charlotte wiped out on a scooter at the playground; she got road rash on her knee and I had to use vodka on a napkin to clean it out. We booked a room at a strange-looking hotel near the airport in Frankfurt and plan to leave by noon tomorrow so mom can get home and off the autobahn before dark. I bought a cookie the size of a volleyball for Charlotte I haven’t given her yet that says on it Nobody’s Perfect.

Thanks everyone for playing along with me this month as we spent almost four weeks here in Germany visiting my mom—I had fun sharing scenes of our time together, thanks for reading. Bill

Categories: Memoir, travel

Tags: humor, journal writing, Memoir, mid-life crisis, No Christmas in Germany, nostalgia, parenting, sentiment, travel, William Pearse writer