How To Make Friends When Words Don’t Work

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Eleven months ago, we landed in Germany and set up camp in a local hotel.  No place to call home, we quickly found a place, but it was occupied until the end of August. We needed a summer dwelling.

That’s how we ended up on top of the mountain in a tiny place called Heroldsburg. Population approximately 100. That grew to 104 the day we moved in.

We lived in an apartment above an amazing couple who took us in like family.

She spoke no English. He knew a little. So when they invited us to the Johannis Feuer approximately six days after we arrived, we figured that would be the end of a short-lived friendship. We thought the language-barrier would necessitate a mere landlord/tenant kind of deal.

We were wrong.

All summer long, they kept inviting our company. Kaffee und Kuchen at least once a week. Grillen und Trinken more than a few times. (Translation: amazing grilled brats and steaks and drinks — water, beer, apple juice, lemonade, whatever you want.)

When my youngest turned eight on the first of August, we invited them up for her birthday meal. They gave her a gift and a card and a hug.

They treated us like family, even though different languages forces us to  leave so much unsaid. We could use our words to communicate little.

Our lives became our voices.

We learned that he had an older son who lived far away.

We found out she’d had a brain tumor that had been removed several years ago. It rendered her unable to drive. So she took the one-hour bus-ride to the city for work.

We met their extended family who lived atop the little mountain as well. They shared their garden and didn’t let me only take a little when I helped tend it one evening. Zucchini. Black green beans. (They were green beans, only black.) Potatoes. Oh, the potatoes!

We called each other friends. Then we moved to the city after three months’ time.

We exchanged phone numbers, birthday dates (birthdays in Germany are a really big deal), and email addresses. But, really, how do you call someone whose words you can’t really understand?

So when I passed him in the city-center last week, I greeted him with a huge hug. We had lost touch by virtue of the language-barrier that rendered us un-phonable.

“We must visit you before we leave!” I said in my thick American accent.

“Sunday!” He said. “Fifteen o’clock.” (Because they keep time like the army here in this land of the Deutsch. It means math in my head, but I’m starting to get it.)

“And how are you?” I wanted to know.

He answered with news that made my heart sink down low. Karin has another tumor. This one’s inoperable. They can only try with radiation to make it go away. He told all about it. Details I did not understand. And not just because he delivered them in German.

And then he said the word we knew was one of his favorites. He’d said it a lot when we lived near.

“Sheist!”

And all I could do was say the same. Because sometimes the only word you can say is the one you never do.

There is more to this story. So much more I have to tell you. But you’ll have to come back tomorrow. For I fear this post is turning into a book. See you then!