In the kitchen, reconciling with the enemy

I've been tracing a path of family history lately, following the route that brought my parents together in England during World War II and eventually resulted in my speaking German almost as early as I spoke my mother tongue.

During the US occupation of Europe after the war, my military family spent three tours in Germany, the last of which holds my oldest memories. It was early spring when we sailed across the Atlantic to a very new life. As military housing was at a premium, we lived "on the economy," moving into a tiny village 45 minutes from Frankfurt, where a family named Geiss welcomed us into the ground floor of their home while they squeezed upstairs to make room for us.

I say "welcomed" because, contrary to popular belief about German-American relations at the time, the Geisses were kind - generous, really - even though they had very little, particularly after the war. But while they no doubt also welcomed the money they were paid for sharing that clean, accommodating space, they always felt far more like friendly relatives than landlords.

What I remember most is how cheerful and happy they were. I later learned that Herr Geiss, like my family, had only recently arrived in Germany. Before that, his wife and children had waited 15 long years while he was a prisoner of war in a Russian prison camp, wondering whether they'd ever see him again. I understand now that after he came home, they saw every day as a new beginning and treated it like something too precious to waste on anything but gratitude and joy.

It was during Easter week that year that the Geisses and I shared a curious day of cultural exchange. My parents had some complicated errands to run, and the Geisses offered to watch me while they were away. My 4-year-old self delighted in the day's pursuits, which actually involved little more than following along behind the couple as they did their chores, prepared the field behind their home for planting, and let me discover some stray potatoes they had missed at harvest time.

After we had eaten those potatoes along with eggs we'd collected from the hens, they introduced me to my first Easter eggs. We were coloring these when my parents returned bearing some traditional American fare: Hershey bars and a big bowl of popcorn that they had brought as an Easter gift and a thank you.

Most Germans had never seen popcorn because corn was grown only for animal feed in those days. That bowl lasted for hours as the Geisses removed a piece at a time, holding it up and marveling as they named the creature or object that its shape approximated. Eventually, we all began to do the same amid lots of laughter and a pretty good vocabulary lesson on both sides of our shared language barrier.

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